Women invest up to 90% of their income in the well-being, health, and nutrition of their families. Beyond covering basic needs, every peso supports children’s school attendance, strengthens household food security, and reinforces local economies.

Magda, a participant in the MARES savings group project in the Eastern Zone of Villa de Zaachila, experiences this transformation at home:

“Everything I’ve learned, I’ve put into practice at home with my children, and even with my parents… When they (the instructors) give us a workshop and provide instructions of what we need to do, we follow them with love, and we teach it to our children.”

 

Magda’s story is just one of many…

Globally, more than 75% of unpaid care work falls on women. They are central within families, caring, educating, and supporting the development of all their members, passing down principles and values to future generations.

When women gain access to knowledge, resources, and leadership opportunities, they break cycles of poverty and promote their children’s education, transforming not only their own future but that of society as a whole.

Children observe and learn from their mothers’ dedication and resilience, shaping their own expectations and future roles.

When women lead, they promote participation at all levels, offering diverse perspectives that lead to more inclusive, people-centered solutions focused on collective well-being.

Through the training in social and solidarity economy offered by SOMOS CAFETALERAS, this year we expect to accompany 150 women coffee producers in the Sierra Sur and Mixteca regions of Oaxaca, belonging to different groups and advancement stages.

Within this group, 23 long-standing participants have already improved the health of their soils, adopted sustainable composting practices, and implemented actions to strengthen their brands.

Nilda, one of the participants from the community of San Agustín Loxicha, explains it this way:

“We have worked a lot on solidarity… when I don’t have a product or, even when someone asks if I have coffee, or if I have it in a certain presentation, I say, ‘Well, I have mine in these presentations… but there is also another person who sells it at such price, and I don’t know her product, but if you’d like, you can ask her,’ trying to get more people involved, not just me selling my things, trying to support others.”

Puente was founded on the principle that rural families have the right to nutritional understanding and to access healthy, culturally appropriate foods; and believing that agroecology, using appropriate technologies and biofertilizers, combined with an abundance of ancestral knowledge, is a way to replenish the soil, combat climate change and grow a beautiful and nutritious grain.

For its part, SiKanda contributes more than eight years of experience successfully designing and implementing projects focused on women’s entrepreneurship, solidarity networks, community leadership, and advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality.

The partnership with SiKanda builds on this foundation, extending support to women in the most marginalized regions of Oaxaca, areas that are often left behind due to their remoteness and limited access to infrastructure.

The Mixteca and Sierra Sur regions are home to 10 of the 12 poorest municipalities in the state. Accessing essential services or training programs often means traveling long hours through mountainous terrain. For women of these regions accessing essential services or training programs often means traveling long hours through mountainous terrain: a 200 km distance can easily turn injto a six-hour journey to the capital for what might be a two-day workshop.

For many women, who balance household care, agricultural work, and community service, this is simply impossible. So instead of asking women to come to us, we go to them, closing not only the physical distance but also the symbolic gap between women and their dreams.

The partnership with SiKanda builds on this foundation, extending support to women in the most marginalized regions of Oaxaca, areas that are often left behind due to their remoteness and limited access to infraestructure.

The Mixteca and Sierra Sur regions are rich in biodiversity and ideal for growing high-quality coffee. But these same lands face growing environmental pressures — deforestation, soil erosion, and increasingly severe weather events.

In 2023, Hurricane Agatha devastated coffee farms in the Sierra Sur, cutting production by up to 90% in some areas, Meanwhile, in the highlands of Mixteca, the arrival of diseases and pests such as the berry borer beetle and the coffee leaf rust, are constant problems faced by producers.

This has been the case for Isabel:

“The young people…many of them migrated and left. Those of us who remained are their parents, carrying on the work. A few have stayed, but there are no young people left, they all emigrated out of necessity. When coffee prices are good, we manage to do well, but when they’re bad, we can’t even cover our costs.”

“Right now, our problem with coffee is that it gets infested, first with the coffee borer beetle and then with the coffee leaf miner. All our coffee was ruined, and when we cut it and tried to pulp it, there were no beans left, just pure rubble, pure waste… Our two-year harvest is gone; it attacked us. But where there are large plants, everything has been destroyed. We are planting only new plants again, but we are suffering”.