“I come from a large family, with four sisters and one brother. We were blessed to attend school, and all graduated from high school. In 2013, I started my own business called Batz Textiles. Batz means “thread” in Tz’utujil, the Mayan language I speak. My mother is an artisan, and she taught me how to weave. After graduating high school, I worked as an artisan for different places, but there was great instability with those jobs. Now, as a business owner, I can provide meaningful work for many artisans. We began with five artisans, and now more than fifty people help me with our products. I have attended college to learn more about management, and two of my sisters have done online training to better serve our customers. I set goals each year for our business. We were first in a rented space, but now we have built our own place. One of the main problems in our type of business is that artisans are not well-paid and are not treated with dignity. Because we no longer had to pay rent, we could invest in the lives of more artisans in deeper ways. When the pandemic hit, it was very challenging to offer income to our artisans. Because of Orphan Outreach Marketplace, we were able to provide jobs. Right now, around fifty families are being helped. Not all of them live in San Juan. We also have a group of women and some men working in Cerro de Oro, as well as Totonicapán. Thank you to the founders of the Orphan Outreach Marketplace for opening doors for us because it is not easy to make our way into new markets. We can’t thank you enough for taking our products to different places and we couldn’t do it if it weren’t for people like you. We thank you for this opportunity which has a major impact on the life of many people. We are very thankful."