MayaBags: A Story of Dedication to Safeguard Maya Culture & Traditional Creative Skills
Back-strap Looming © MayaBags®️
MayaBags®️ handmade bags carry a profound story about Belizean Maya culture, its inherent creativity and the female Maya artisans who make the textiles that frame the bags. MayaBags is a successful social enterprise that works with Maya women from the Toledo District. They create bags made of textiles created with traditional Maya hand skills, most of which have been used for over 2000 years.
The company produces, markets and sells its design-driven accessories collection, targeting high-end customers who look for modern details and an inspiring design in the bags they choose to purchase. While MayaBags are inspired by nature and crafted with the ancient skills and spirit of the Maya, the story behind them and their unique look succeed at attracting these same customers.
We interviewed Judy Bergsma (Founder of MayaBags) and Desiree Arnold (Production & Business Manager in Belize) about their role in the company and how their business has been designed to impact Belizean cultural heritage and Maya populations.
The story behind the entire operation
Jovita Shol, Embroiderer of the Lucky Butterfly and Co-Founder, Judy Bergsma, Founder, Desiree Arnold, Belize Executive Director © MayaBags®️
“I always give credit to The Nature Conservancy (TNC), specifically its Long Island (NY) Chapter for my discovery of Belize and the first steps in this journey of a thousand miles that turned into MayaBags.”
Judy Bergsma: In the late 1990's I was asked to head up a TNC Committee to identify and establish a Caribbean or Central American partner who falls into the same eco-zone as Long Island. Working with other TNC Board members, we identified Belize as an attractive partner location, as we share 49 species of upland song and shorebirds and many estuarine and coastal issues.
The main goal was to protect rare ecosystems of flora and fauna on the land and in the surrounding rivers and the ocean. We hoped to help provide education for people in the local area about their surrounding ecosystems and how to keep them healthy.
The local conservation partner we selected to work with was The Toledo Institute for Development and the Environment (TIDE) in Southern Belize. I took the lead in meeting them, which was the beginning of this journey that would wonderfully change my life.
Judy has always had a passion for textiles – "textiles that are either hand-embroidered or hand-loomed by indigenous artists around the world." She mentions she has been collecting textiles she loves whenever she travels. On one of her first journeys to Belize, she spent the weekend with a Maya family with whom she had become friends. During her stay in their village, she helped Brigita, a local woman, organize a small canned goods store in the front of their house and helped her start raising turkeys for sale. From her time with Brigita, Judy came to a new understanding.
“I realized that many Maya women suffer from low self-esteem and that virtually no girls attended high school because of the cost.”
For Judy, her strong determination to equalize 'the playing field' was a task of utmost importance.
“The Maya community strongly believes in education, and many people will try to send their sons to school. However, people simply could not afford high school for their girls, given that even basic necessities like enough food are often beyond their reach.”
At the end of Judy's stay, Brigita's sister Jovita presented her with a gift – a simple but quality embroidery piece that quite accurately and skillfully depicted a beautiful butterfly.
"I had seen no evidence of this level of skill in any place I had travelled in the Maya area of Belize. For me, it was truly an ah-ha moment," says Judy. A recognition that Maya women have maintained traditional skills like embroidery, basket-making, and perhaps back-strap looming provided the basis for the beginning of something rather life-changing for the Maya communities in the Toledo District.
The Business
MayaBags ix chel (Goddess of Weaving) Multi Hobo © MayaBags®️
MayaBags pepem (Butterfly) Clutch for an I-pad, phone and personal accessories © MayaBags®️
Judy Bergsma: We spent over two years at the beginning of MayaBags re-training and setting high standards for the artisans' products executed with their hand skills. At the same time, we created different product lines to test out how and where we might find the best market for our products, which, in turn, would help keep the women working. As a whole, we've done quite well with this. We have sold to large and famous department stores in the US, Europe and Japan, such as Barney's NY, Anthropologie, Scoop NYC, Scoop Beach, Brown's of London, Isetan and to the top resorts and gift stores in Belize such as Turtle Inn and Hamanasi. However, shopping trends are changing rapidly in the US. Many larger chain stores face massive competition from online markets and are either closing or narrowing product lines. As such, now we rely much more on smaller stores in the US market, social media and our online shop.
MayaBags Mission
Maya Village in the Toledo District © MayaBags®️
MayaBags is committed to fostering ancient skills, inspiring personal achievement, building a village economy, teaching financial literacy and celebrating creativity. These five goals are aimed at serving Belize and its indigenous population.
MayaBags is a social enterprise that celebrates the traditional hand skills of Maya women from the Toledo District. Each piece they produce is a beautiful creation that allows a glimpse into the artists' personality, unique culture, and the lovely colours surrounding Belize on land and sea.
Safeguarding culture through artisan business development
Back-strap Looming © MayaBags®️
Desiree Arnold: Quality execution of handmade products and our marketing skills go hand in glove. Without a market and an ability to pay the artisans for their skills, traditional hand skills will be lost, at one point, forever. When I discovered these artisans, Belize was not known at all as a quality craft-producing country. Traditional hand skills were on the brink of collapse. The skills associated with creating handspun yarn and dying already had been lost. We've also observed in villages where we are not working, the quality of traditional crafts continues to go down. In contrast, in the nine villages where we work, the traditional skills are alive and well.
Teaching business skills and raising awareness of social issues
Embroidering © MayaBags®️
Alternate for Backstrap Looming © MayaBags®️
Besides building a business that provides income to Maya women, we are giving them more independence and a voice in their households and villages – Judy comments on the impact MayaBags efforts have had on entrepreneurship and social life in the Maya communities where MayaBags works.
“Our fundamental goals address how our effort will serve Belize and its indigenous population. For example, in the village of San Miguel, one of the embroiderers who formerly worked with MayaBags observed and learned entrepreneurial skills from us. She has now opened her own chocolate-making operation, fairly professionally packaged, for tourists who pass through the village. That thrills me when I see a woman start a new effort that can bring income into her family”
“When we have team meetings, we talk about issues Maya women have to deal with, such as understanding the medications given to the women and their effects on their bodies (we call it the little pink pill syndrome) and even sometimes about being beaten by their husbands. We talk to the women that it is against the law for a husband to strike or beat a wife. We’ve even had a couple of instances now where a woman who works with us has reported her husband to the police, and they have been arrested.”
MayaBags is also documenting how many of their artisan's school-age children or teens (both girls and boys) are now going to school, especially high school and college. The company also provides counselling to women to help them learn how to manage their family finances. We also encourage the women to start bank or credit union accounts and to start saving money. By supporting MayaBags, customers are not only buying a beautiful accessory but ensuring the economic, social and educational development of Maya villages.
“Sometimes when I’m feeling down, especially during the pandemic we’ve all been dealing with, I have to remind myself what MayaBags has accomplished in the context of many challenges and that our mission is still very much alive and our hopes for the future of the Maya women we work with is still intact. Then, I get up and dance, thanking Mother Nature for the wonderful opportunity to do this work….and I know Desiree would say exactly the same thing. Thank you and onwards we go.”
Contact
Belize:
Phone +501-722-2175, Email DesArnold@MayaBags.org or Sales@MayaBags.org
Facebook or on Hubspot
USA:
Phone 212-874-5569 NYC, 917-697-2203 cell,
Website www.MayaBags.org
Written by Romani Sanchez and Judy Bergsma