The mission of Beyond Poverty is to assist economically limited communities achieve their goals to move beyond poverty through education, economic and infrastructure projects. We will be working initially in a small community named San Jose Mas Alla in Guatemala.

Last year, Beyond Poverty worked in collaboration with INTECAP, an organization that provides vocational training in Guatemala, to create a community bakery in the town of San Jose Mas Alla. INTECAP provided technical assistance for construction of an oven and workshop as well as small business and baking courses.

Last fall the bakery officially began production. Since then the bakery project in San Jose Mas Alla has begun to take off. The bakery cooperative is working towards increasing sales within the community and in neighboring towns.

As well as the bakery project, Beyond Poverty will begin a similar project in a neighboring community with a weaving cooperative. This group has been working together for many years but wishes to improve their quality of weavings as well as design more widely marketable items than those they currently weave.

Again we will be using the technical expertise of INTECAP for courses not only in product design and quality improvement but in small business management. The weavers are currently in the middle of their classes and you can already see a dramatic improvement in the quality of their weaving.

The weavers will participate in an upcoming 3 day expo in San Marcos (a neighboring city). They have never participated in anything like this before due to the lack of higher quality weavings. As they develop their designs we will also be connecting them with markets with the same goal to create an ongoing income for themselves and their families.