Our Work in Oaxaca · Tezoatlán
In the Mixteco highlands, families live with no clean running water and few ways to earn. We turn a skill passed down for generations into a living, and open doors their children have never had.
The place & the people
Here I was, worried about my car payment. And these families don’t even have clean water to drink.
Victor Paz Jr., on his first visit to Tezoatlán
The Mixteco are one of Mexico’s oldest indigenous peoples, with their own language and dialects that change from town to town. Many homes have no electricity, no doors, no plumbing. Water sits in a tank on the roof and feeds down by gravity.
Kitchens are open-air, cooked over wood fire. Livestock wander in and out. With little to export, there has never been much chance to earn, and that is exactly the problem we set out to solve.
◆ Every $10 = one day’s wages for an artesano
The one great skill of this region is palm weaving: baskets, bags, hats, wallets, flowers. We built a marketplace around it and sell every piece at cost, so the money goes straight back to the maker, not to us.
It’s a worker cooperative in spirit: the artesanos earn a real, dignified wage for real, beautiful work, and you get a one-of-a-kind piece with a story woven in.
Educating the next generation
Economic opportunity keeps a family fed today. Education is how their children build a life of their own tomorrow. We’ve started with two programs, run right in the community.
Our band, Banda Tachi Ndai, gives kids instruments, lessons, and a stage. They play the local festivals and grow up carrying their culture forward, note by note.
Taught in homes across the community, our classes keep the Mixteco language and Spanish alive for the next generation, so heritage isn’t lost as families migrate to survive.
What’s next
With steady support, we can go beyond music and language, giving these kids the skills to provide for themselves and strengthen their own community.
Science, technology, engineering & math. The skills of independence.
Growing food and know-how in a land of scarce water.
Health, teamwork, and somewhere to belong.
Discovering and developing every kind of talent.
Become a monthly Neighbor, funding fair wages, the School of Music, and the classes that keep this culture alive.
