Isla Women’s Beading Collective

Click a thumbnail for a larger view:

Our women’s retreat has connected with a group of Mayan women who have created a small beading collective on Isla Mujeres, a tiny island off the Yucatan coast in Mexico.  For many years, we have been bringing seed beads down to the collective when we journey to Isla Mujeres for our women’s retreat, Portals to the Self: A Women’s Circle by the Sea.  We learned that the women support themselves and their children from the beading collective sales.  They sell their crafts in a tiny shop up island and in the town square during fiestas and holidays.

We are now selling their beautiful jewelry to family and friends.  The purchase of one small bracelet,  handcrafted with traditional Mayan designs, provides the equivalent of three day’s wages for these women and their families.  Most of the women are indigenous culture, and speak Mayan and Spanish.  Their children and grandchildren help them with written Spanish.  With the proceeds, life’s necessities are purchased, school tuition for their children paid, and the fee for them to study at a new English language school is possible.

The Isla women are enormously appreciative of our efforts to help them be self-sufficient economically.  We feel like our circle of women now extends to include these women as well.  All profits go to the Isla women and their beading collective.

If you would like to donate seed beads, please contact us at kfrlisw@aol.com.

Our heartfelt thanks to you for helping to support our amigas, these Isla women and their beading collective.

 

Many thanks,

Carol, Kelly, Karen, Ceci, Mari, Marcela, Irma, Gloria, Vivian, Luisa, Rocio, Cecilia, Zuleyna, Rocio, Dorita, Magda, Lupe, and all the women of the beading collective