Many companies “give back,” but only from profit earned after expenses and salaries. At Gathering Place, we donate one percent of all our sales (not profits) to important, grassroots initiatives in the communities where our spices, herbs, and teas are grown. These grassroots projects directly improve the lives of real people.
Meet Delores! She is a young Mayan woman living in a village in Guatemala. For the last five years, Gathering Place has supported her high school education through a non-profit organization called Aldea Maya and their Student Sponsorship program. Delores is now 19 years old and dreams of becoming a nurse in order to support her family and younger siblings. We have upped our donation and are now putting Delores through nursing school.
Aldea Maya, founded in 2007 by a Canadian named Louise Sosa, is an organization dedicated to bettering the lives of Mayans in the Lake Atitlan area of the Guatemalan highlands. With only 1% of indigenous people graduating high school in Guatemala, one of Aldea Maya’s core values has become education.
They built a middle school in 2012 and it now boasts 75 students. In addition, the organization sponsors 60+ students in elementary, middle, and high school, as well as 21 university students studying in a wide range of fields.
Gathering Place is proud to help Aldea Maya do their amazing work and honoured to help real people on the ground in an area of the world where we source our organic, fairly traded cardamom and allspice.