Guatemalan Beaded Jewelry and Coffee

At Ann Quinn’s Furniture and Home Store, we have been selling two types of merchandise that are very important to us because of our involvement as volunteer at the Mission of San Lucas Toliman which are the Guatemalan beaded jewelry and  Juan Anna coffee. 

One of the most important programs of the San Lucas Toliman Mission is the coffee project.  What it does for the community is astounding.  The small subsistence indigenous farmers try to scrape out a living growing coffee on only two or three acres. 

                                                          

The mission meets with a group of these farmers to ask what price they need for their coffee in order to make a living to feed and care for their families.  The consortium of farmers sets the price for their coffee.  The Mission buys the coffee from them, dries it, and bags it to sell to the volunteers that visit the mission.  It also sells roasted and “green bean” coffee to the United States through the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota.  The coffee is named Juan Anna Coffee which is much better than fair trade coffee because the farmers set their own price.

The beaded jewelry is made by mothers in their homes and sold to tourists in order to supplement the income of the family.  We buy beaded key chains, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and purses to sell in our store.  We ask them to set their price and we don’t negotiate.  We feel that this fair trade way of purchasing the jewelry helps improve their living conditions in small ways and values their work.

Profits from the sale of both the coffee and the jewelry are spent on more books in Spanish for the classroom libraries and on Montessori materials.  We pay our own expenses for our trips to Guatemala.