2013
Lori Connell
Sewing on a new machine!
Maquila upgrades, Back to school partnerships and Winterfest production.
This year because of the outpouring of donations, we were able to purchase 4 industrial sewing machines, industrial sergers and a leather stitching machine for our sewing maquila. This will allow our ladies to manufacture higher quality products and they will be able to utilize heavier and more durable fabrics. Mi Esperanza strives to provide well-made products that will last, and the addition of these new machines will help us to do so. It will also allow us to seek and accept more jobs from outside labels to generate work for our women, program recognition and support for Mi Esperanza. We are excited about the possibilities.
The Winterfest Group, who is responsible for the popular yearly youth event held in Arlington, TX and Gatlinburg, TN, hired the Mi Esperanza maquila to produce their 2014 registration bags for their 600 group leaders. Our ladies in Santa Ana were busy sewing the bags from large corn sacks all summer! We are grateful to Dudley Chancy and his team for providing this work to our women!
An exciting avenue of work for our maquila has come through the Back to School program run by The Honduras Project, thehondurasproject.org. Through their yearly back to school program Mi Esperanza has had the blessing of making school uniforms for children living in poverty. The Honduras Project on several occasions has hired our maquila to make 100’s of uniforms that they distribute during their school supply drive. This is a huge win/win opportunity. Children are receiving uniforms (that are mandatory to attend school, but families can not afford) and Honduran women are being paid to make them!
We were also hired by another group of volunteers working on the north coast of Honduras to produce 65 school bags. It is the same situation as the uniforms..bags for children in need and work for Honduran women.
Please contact us if you would like to fund such a project!
This year we also added Jessica Schroer to our board of directors. You can go to our “about us” section and read all about Jessica. We are happy to have her as part of our team!