We are so grateful to have the support and collaboration of the Skees Family Foundation since 2015. As partners in social justice and change activism, Skees Foundation has worked with WCCN and its clients to give voice, dignity and opportunity to those who might otherwise not know that they are valued and valuable in this world. Their example of outreach and advocacy to others in their community to get involved and informed about what each of us can do to make a difference in the life of another human-being is invaluable to keep up momentum of the social change movement. - Nancy Metzger, Executive Director
MY JOB Readers Support Jobs in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
By Suzanne Skees,
Originally Published in its entirety on March 1, 2017 at The Huffington Post
A small group of California readers of my book, MY JOB: Real People At Work Around the World, has joined forces to support job-creation programs working in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. They’re proof that it’s possible to collaborate to create dignified work for all.
The group, a giving circle called Sisters Share Santa Cruz, met to learn about my family and the mission behind Skees Family Foundation, and how our efforts to help end poverty in the U.S. and abroad led me into this three-year book project. We talked about the audacity of publishing any book at all in today’s glutted market and the hope that MY JOB will gather people together around their shared human experience of work. Hearing excerpts from three chapters, the Sisters Share group decided to donate small grants to three job-creation programs, one of them being WCCN. WCCN has already used the gift in part to help create jobs and income opportunities for a women's weaving cooperative in Guatemala.
MY JOB‘s Chapter 8 narrator, Mayra Gámez, got pulled out of school to work alongside her mother as a maid and migrant farmer; but she never gave up on her dream to own a piece of land and a casita (little house) in the mountains of Nicaragua. She endured the heartbreak of abandonment and divorce and raised a family of four children on her own, all the while learning farming and business skills that would lead to her current role as founder and president of a women’s coffee-farming cooperative.
Mayra received support from impact-investor Working Capital for Community Needs/WCCN, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit dedicated to providing loans to low-income workers and small-scale farmers as well as market access to improve the lives and communities of the working poor in Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru. She’s just one of nearly 50,000 people who’ve accessed a self-determined life via dignified work through WCCN.
The giving circle whose members decided to support these three global job-creation programs, Sister Share Santa Cruz, is based on a mission to create community for like-minded women to share causes and activities that are “close-to-the-heart.”
Sisters Share describes itself as a forum for women to share causes, ideas, and events, with a mission of supporting well-lived lives and the sisterhood of all women. Founded in 2016, the group brings together women of all ages who gather monthly for socializing, sharing, gratitude, and giving, supporting local and global nonprofits either founded by women or in support of girls and women.
Spending two consecutive evenings with this group (they meet on both Sunday and Monday evenings to accommodate members’ busy schedules), I was struck by their spirit of support and insight into what it takes to create jobs and contribute to a virtuous ecosystem of prosperity through work.
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For more information about Sisters Share, contact Cheri Lippmann at sisterssharesc@gmail.com. If you’d like to help create a job, simply visit our partner page at www.myjobstories.org.
