2021-2024 Work with Female Artisan Cooperatives

PSYDEH is thrilled to announce that Hamburg, Germany-based Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation will help to finance our program incubating female artisan cooperatives through 2024.

What is the program?

Our multi-year program is built at the nexus of gender equity and economic solidarity, pursuant to a recommendation from the UN Program for the Development of Mexico, and consistent with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda Goals.

Generally, our objectives are to (1) generate and share sustained income for members, supporting women and their families to build more independent, self-determined, and sustainable lives in rural Indigenous regions of Mexico, (2) create annual women-led impact projects to address specific local needs, and (3) strengthen women’s full and effective participation as leaders in political, economic and public life, including through the organization of annual regional public forums.

Specifically, we endeavor to empower Indigenous women to (A) build a network of four municipal-level female artisan cooperatives that (B) generate direct income for members while (C) educating neighbors on how they can do the same and (D) leading meaningful community impact projects guided by (E) their own women-led development agenda based on that which already exists but updated at (F) regional public forums organized annually by the Network and PSYDEH.

We know that we will successfully achieve these objectives and produce these outcomes because:

First, the program is designed pursuant to what Indigenous women and their communities want and need: form female artisan cooperatives using existing local resources to lead local, sustainable economic development.

Second, we know that delivering short-term economic benefits inspires trust, and produces the resources that vulnerable, marginalized people need to engage in medium-and long-term focused efforts.

Third, thanks to our 2021 Bordamos Juntos social enterprise initiative, the third in a series of similar efforts, we know that there is a strong market for local Indigenous artisans working collectively to supply national and global demand for their goods.

A partnership years in the making

The Foundation first met PSYDEH when we participated in the German online competition #youforG20 in late-2017. One year later, PSYDEH accompanied their staff visiting existing and potential Mexican non-profit partners in Hidalgo and Puebla. They reciprocated this interest by visiting our target work areas. We then exchanged ideas and proposals in 2019 before suspending negotiations due to the pandemic in 2020. With the reopening of European economies in mid-summer 2021, the Foundation reinitiated the conversation. Our now formal partnership is another key to our strategy to expand reach in German-speaking countries.

About the social business Lemonaid and ChariTea

The Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation is a non-profit organization started and funded by its for-profit parent company the Lemonaid Beverages company. The company makes iced tea (ChariTea) and lemonades (Lemonaid) from the best ingredients, organic & Fairtrade, from cooperatives & plantations around the world. They pay higher prices for the ingredients and thereby support fair, dignified farming. And they go beyond Fairtrade: every bottle sold gives an additional 5 cents to their Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation. To date, they’ve collected more than 6 million euros for social projects in the regions from which they source their ingredients. In Mexico, for example, they buy agave syrup as a natural sweetener from producers in central Mexico

As for Foundation, their aim is to contribute to the sustainable improvement of social, economic, and ecological structures in the Global South, particularly in regions that have been negatively affected by the structures of the global economy. They fund projects that assign responsibility and ownership for the implementation of projects to local partners, focusing on supporting entrepreneurial and income-generating initiatives to promote economic independence.