Happy Mother's Day - Threads of Hope Revisited (Episode 20)

What happens when rural indigenous women gain access to global markets? Lives transform, cycles of poverty break, and daughters begin to dream of careers unimaginable to their mothers. This powerful story unfolds as we speak with Ruth Álvarez-DeGolia, who started Mercado Global as an Ivy-League university sophomore selling handcrafted items on campus, and has since built a movement empowering thousands of women across rural Guatemala. 
 
The magic happens at the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and economic opportunity. Through a partnership with Food for the Poor that provides industrial sewing machines, looms, critical training and more, these artisans are creating products now carried by Levi Strauss, Stitch Fix, and Stuart Weitzman. But the transformation runs deeper than fashion – with 75% of participating women now sending their children to school and many opening their first bank accounts. 
 
Discover how beautiful, handcrafted products are creating generational change, and why Ruth believes indigenous Guatemalan women deserve to be recognized as some of the world's most innovative rural entrepreneurs. 

Support this work by visiting foodforthepoor.org/mothersday
 
@levis 
@stitchfix 
@stuartweitzman 

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Transcript

Welcome To Beyond The Plate

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Beyond the Plate, a Food for the Poor podcast. I'm Paul Jacobs. Here, food opens the door to powerful stories of hope, connection, and transformation.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

And I'm Daniel Patinho. Each episode we go beyond the meal to the heart of the people, places, and purpose behind it.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

This is Beyond the Plate, where every story starts with what's on the table.

Mercado Global’s Mission In Guatemala

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome to Beyond the Plate, a Food for the Poor podcast where we share stories behind the hands that heal, feed, and lift up communities across Latin America and the Caribbean. I'm your host, Daniel Patinho, and today we're looking at how Mercado Global is turning bags and bracelets into food. And trust me, you're gonna want to hear this.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Hey, I'm Paul Jacobs, and we're so grateful that you get to share this episode with us because what I really love is the fact that we're going to uplift mothers.

Ruth’s Origin Story And First Sales

SPEAKER_01 0:50

I would like to introduce someone whose vision has changed thousands of lives. Some of the lives that we Paul and I have been kind of talking about here this afternoon here now. Ruth Alvarez Nagolia is the co-founder and executive director of Mercado Global. What started as a small nonprofit working with just a handful of women artisans in Guatemala has become a powerful force in social enterprise. Now let's start at the beginning, please. Welcome, Ruth.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Thank you so much for having me here today. It's such an honor.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I love I love this designation.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Oh, thank you so much. It's very special.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

You know, take us back, Ruth, uh, to the beginning. You know, you're um you're an Ivy League college sophomore, and you've got a project, and you decide Latin America and women as the basis for the beginnings of what is now Mercado Global, some 21 years later.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I was so fortunate. I had a fellowship to go work with an association of rural communities over the summer after my sophomore year. And I had no plans to start anything. Um, but I just I had never felt so useful in my entire life to get to be there and work and be in partnership with these amazing women. There was nothing they wanted more than to provide a better future for their kids. And, you know, we tried everything. Um, tried uh uh, you know, tried to build a local market, all sorts of things. But what they really needed more than anything was just access to an international market because they were these amazing weavers. And it started just as a favor to them. These women had asked me as a favor to them to take their artisanillas and sell them wherever I came from, as they put it. And uh I remember setting it up and it was not considered very prestigious to be selling things, but I was like, this is the most important thing that I could do. And that first weekend we sold$5,000 in product and it sent 26 little girls to elementary school for a year. Wow. And and that's where it started.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

What did that do for you seeing the interest on the on this side of the world and the need being met for those families that you just visited in Guatemala?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

You know, 10% of Guatemalans actually live in the US. So these are our neighbors, and we're so connected in so many ways. This could have been me, this could have been my sister, it could have been my mom that couldn't get an education growing up in Guatemala. And it was really exciting to see that people wanted their products and people wanted to help. You know, who doesn't want to help a mom send her kids to school? Like everybody wants that. I think, I think an energy is unleashed when you bring together people that otherwise never would have met, would never have connected. And so to bring together consumers in the US, women that want to have an impact through their purchasing power, and makers in Central America who make these gorgeous pieces, it really unleashes the power and it brings people together to build the kind of world that we want all of our children to grow up in.

Why Partnerships Make The Work Scale

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I'm gonna piggyback on what you just said there. Let's talk about the power of partnership and Metcalogloala and Food for the Poor are working together. And what makes that collaboration really work? What's what's something that you've seen that proves that?

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Well, I'm I'm so grateful to get to count Food for the Poor as one of our partners. We're so grateful for it. And I love that the staff at Food for the Poor have this amazing expertise on how to support community development. Our team is all Indigenous women on the ground in Guatemala, working with our partner communities, doing that good work, which means we don't have this big staff in the US able to fundraise to make that work possible, right? And so to have a partner that's connected to this network that can share exactly what you're doing right now, that is incredibly powerful. And we're able to get good work done because we have great partnerships.

The Tools, Training, And Real Results

SPEAKER_02 4:48

All right, so I'm a numbers guy and I want to do the numbers here. We're talking several projects going back more than seven years that have helped either Mercado Global provide training or equipment and materials to start changing lives. This is the partnership with Food for the Poor in Mercado Global, right? Let me run down some numbers here. Delivered 70 industrial sewing machines, delivered 15 overlock machines, seven floor looms. Now I know what a loom is, and I've seen how big. I've actually been in a home where a family had their entire second little house, which is one loom. I mean, this thing's massive, right? We're talking about seven floor looms, uh 173 advanced sewing tool kits, 173 sets of regular training materials, 87 floor loom weaving material sets, 181 detailed training materials, technical sewing training, technical floor loom training, uh community-based education and trainers, Wi-Fi. Okay. Well, there you go. Yeah, I mean, you know, we gotta communicate, right? And generators. Yeah. And you know what's what's also been delivered? Countless women with hope. You're talking about more than a third of these partner artesians are now ha that they now have bank accounts. Three quarters of these women, more than 75%, are enrolling their children in schools. You are establishing an entire generation on a completely different level through what they do best. But I love the fact that you start at the basis, which is self-esteem, it's leadership, it's you know, it's giving them this the foundations, and then we start talking about the skill sets of sewing and all of these other things.

Income, Confidence, And Breaking Poverty

SPEAKER_00 6:39

The power to earn your own dollar changes your life. Totally changes your life. There's nothing more important in terms of being able to map out the future you want for yourself, your family, and your kids. Once they've started working with us and are getting their own income, the way they hold themselves is just different. It's the difference between looking down and speaking softly and not having that confidence to look people in the in the in the eyes and to to holding yourself with pride, telling people that all your daughters are in school, telling your telling people about what you are accomplishing for your family. One of the most effective ways to break the cycle of poverty is just help the mom get an income stream. Because when moms have their income stream, we know that 90 cents of every dollar goes straight to those kids.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

For more about Food for the Poor and Mercado Global and how lives are being changed through sustainable opportunities and compassionate support, go to foodforthepoor.org slash mothersday. That's foodforthepoor.org slash Mothersday. Thanks for listening. We hope you've felt the connection. One plate, one story, one act of love can change everything. Discover more stories and join our community at foodforthepoor.org slash podcasts and follow us too at beyond the plate.podcast. Together we can make a difference. This is Beyond the Plate.