Too busy to say hi
It has been a very long time since we wrote. We have been running strong towards our product launch in Guatemala with our granola, tea, and power bar products and getting our soil and water conservation pilot plots planted with farmers in Mexico. Our team has been busy! Since our beginning 14 months ago, we have grown a lot and EarthEmpower now has 8 empowered women employees in the USA, Mexico, and Guatemala. You can learn about all 8 team members and their roles on our website. EarthEmpower is a legally registered business in all three countries, no small feat! We got a little lost in our activities and as we were really busy with our work on the ground and apologize for our inconsistency, so to get you quickly back on track here is a quick update: 1) After our successful crowdfunding campaign in December we moved full speed ahead to finish our pilot project in Guatemala and scale-up our food products to take it to market. This month we will officially launch our brand NutriFuerza in Guatemala with Granola, Herbal Tea, and Power Bars. Due to the high costs of export licenses and regulatory standards, we are launching sales in Guatemala instead of exporting to the US. The investment from crowdfunding was used to do market research, package design, finalize recipes, build the value chains, and finalize our factory for production at scale. Check out the website for our Guatemala brand – www.nutrifuerza.com, www.instagram.com/nutrifuerzagt.
We have two full time employees and two part time employees from rural indigenous communities in Guatemala. We work with organic farmers and women farmers from the region and pay just prices to facilitate economic impact throughout our value chains. Our long term goal is to expand this to export but we are thrilled to start earning income this month and we are celebrating this huge accomplishment to bring our products to market. 2) Our principal consulting gig in Mexico is focused on finding innovative solutions to resolve the water crisis that Mexico City faces due to climate change and urbanization issues. Due to these issues, there is no longer sufficient water in the aquifer to sustain the populations needs. We work with farmers around the city to infiltrate more water into the aquifer through improved soil and water management. We have facilitated donations to plant thousands of trees and magueys (like agave) to conserve soil and water and worked with farmers to cover their soils with cover crops and crop residue. We consult for The Nature Conservancy of Latin America on this project. 3) As mentioned, in the next week we are re-launching our social media pages as well as a blog on our website. We will be posting updates about blogs on social media, so make sure you follow us on Instagram and Facebook! In our blog and social media, we will be exploring big issues relevant to women in agriculture and specifically what EarthEmpower is doing about in Mexico and Guatemala. Thanks so much for your patience in waiting for an update. We will be in better touch soon.