About Us / Our Story

Eliza Strode, the founder of A Thread of Hope Guatemalan
Fair Trade, went to Guatemala upon graduating from social work school in 1997,
to learn Spanish. She had previously managed food co-ops in Providence and
Cambridge. She happened to meet Mark Camp (now Deputy Executive Director at
Cultural Survival) at a bus stop and learned that he worked with artisan
cooperatives in Guatemala on a Fair-Trade basis. She still has the piece of
paper where she jotted down the names of various artisan co-ops to visit on the
weekends. After four months in Quetzaltenango (Xela), she returned to Boston
having fallen in love with the people, culture, and land of Guatemala.

Two years later, Asociación Maya weaving co-op in Sololá,
which she had visited, wrote and asked her to sell at the upcoming Cultural
Survival Bazaar. Thus began, in an unplanned way, A Thread of Hope Guatemalan
Fair Trade! While working as a clinical social worker at the Boston Emergency
Services Team doing psychiatric crisis work, and then at Boston Health Care for
the Homeless medical respite (Barbara McInnis House), she continued to sell on
weekends at folk festivals, churches, schools, and conferences.

Eliza now works directly with several artisan co-ops,
groups, and families in Guatemala, and purchases from three Fair Trade
wholesalers who distribute Guatemalan crafts in the U.S. (UPAVIM, Mayan Hands,
and Dunitz and Co.).



Please be in touch if you would like to visit Guatemala, take Spanish classes
either online or in a Spanish-immersion home-stay/school in Guatemala, visit
artisans, or would like an online or in-person presentation on Guatemala
(socioeconomics, history, culture), cooperatives, or Fair Trade. Let Eliza know
if you know of a store or business that might like to be a wholesale customer.