Like many others, the Covid-19 hit our Center with terrible timing, and because tourism has completely stopped, we have lost our main subsistence income.
The product thread, from farmer to consumer is a vital part of our sustainable model, and we hope that we can keep weaving a beautiful future for us all during this crisis. Our center focuses on education in sustainable models of living, and we must keep having a regenerative impact on visiting children, tourists and farmers.
Many people depend on our center, and on top of the 7 permanent employees, we have over 30 guatemalan farming families making a part of their living through us.
Tuqtuquilal is a not-for-profit cooperative and all the money made through the sales of our products is being used to pay farmers and our wonderful employees, as well as maintaining the facilities.
Here is a list of our current urgent needs with a cost estimation :
Buying fresh, farmer grown products : $4.000
We buy many raw ingredients, such as fresh cacao, turmeric, plantain, cassava, and Copal from local farming families, and many of them count on their sales to make it through the year. Without their crops our production will also stop, and our goals never met.
This budget would make sure we have cacao available while farmers have it, and keep us productive for the next 3 month, until our core financial needs met
We’d also be making sure that nobody runs out of chocolate!
It would really make a big difference for everyone involved.
Salaries for the next 3 months : $6.000
includes 7 full time local workers and 2 volunteers.
We are proud to pay all of our local employees the minimum daily rate and we would love to be able to keep all of our crew onboard during these hard times.
We need all of them to take care of our young plants, trees and facilities.
The land requires huge amounts of maintenance and now during the rains it is also a great time to plant more crops and increase our sustainability.
TOTAL = $10.000