A Responsible Tourism Adventure in Oaxaca

Saturday, while I chose some quiet downtime, Gwen headed off on a Responsible Tourism adventure. Her trip to the towns in the countryside around Oaxaca was put on by a local, three-year-old micro-finance organization. En Via (http://envia.org/) works with female artisans to help them turn their passion into a sustainable business through underwriting their efforts with differing levels of financial loans.

As I dropped Gwen off, I learned that as part of the En Via training, the women must attend workshops on managing money, goal setting, and even marketing their crafts. After the training, the women must form a group of 3 women, not necessarily all in the same business, to have access to funding beginning at 1300 pesos ($100). The funds are interest-free if they participate in the tours by telling their story to those passing by like Gwen. It's amazing to note they have a 99% payback rate.

Many of the En Via tour guides are volunteers pursuing some related professional experience like mirco-lending or sustainable tourism. Here's Gwen's description of her tour.

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On my tour, Anna and Kate, our two guides, both knew Spanish and Zapotec. As a result they were good at supporting the nervous artisans, and very helpful as mediators in purchases. Anna is herself starting a microbrewery business with partners in Mexico City, so she was well acquainted with the challenges these women could face starting businesses in Mexico.

I first met with a textile weaver and her mother. The mom was a whiz on making the tasty Oaxacan chocolate and made us all some of the sweet beverage. Her daughter showed us how she spun her own wool yarn, hand-dyed the yarn using natural ingredients (insects for red, lightened with lemon juice, for example), and then wove beautiful rugs, ponchos and shawls.

The next woman we visited started her own general mercantile shop in her small village. She began by first selling shoes from a catalog, and then she added to her product line by offering fresh eggs and other food products requested by her customers. She has plans for continued expansion into shelf stable items starting with a variety of soap products.

The third visit was to another weaver who bought dyed yarns and specialized creating much bigger rugs, hand-embroidered tablecloths, and napkins. By this point I couldn't resist purchasing a rug with a very complex Zapotec design. It will fit perfectly in our Tucson home. She was happy to sell it to me for her asking price of 700 pesos or about fifty dollars.

The last woman we visited had a tortilla business in which she raised her own corn, had it ground by one of several local mills, and then prepared her own tortillas. She was making and selling at least 160 tortillas a day. A gracious host, she mixed and offered us a special corn and chocolate drink, but I can't recall the name. The flavor was vanilla and malt, and the beverage had the consistency of milk. It was delicious and refreshing on what was becoming a very hot day!

It was a great day in the small villages around Oaxaca. Seeing and supporting real artisans who were catching the entrepreneurial spirit felt good. I have to say for me, this was one of the highlight experiences on this trip.

If you want to support a solid group making a big difference in lives and communities, I recommend En Via. They are working on getting their U.S. not-for-profit status set up, but you can contact them at info@envia.org or through their website: http://envia.org/