La Unión, Grupo Femenino, FTO

La Union is 136 members strong, 100% Lenca ethnic group, based out of Marcala. This cooperative has many functions, including a micro-finance group that’s led by a group of ~ 30 women who get together to pool wages each month and make small-scale loans as needed. This is just the kind of group who can manage pre-crop financing, lot separation, and the distribution of post-harvest premiums. And, given their status within their community, success here could scale to other families within the cooperative, making it an excellent entry-point for the introduction of specialty processing and premiums. This group receives technical assistance, financing and export services from a local cooperative named Pacayal.

Pacayal is small, ten-year-old cooperative in La Paz, the Comayuga Valley, outside of Marcala. In 2012 Edgar Carrilo founded Pacayal in the wake of a devastating round of La Roya, and with the motto ‘quality does not suffer crisis’. From this start, and with the support of Sustainable Harvest, Edgar and family had the contracts, financing (via Root Capital), and technical assistance they needed to get off the ground. At their max Pacayal was able to include over 130 households in their network – all neighbors of Edgar and his extended family. They were able to get certifications (FairTrade and Organic), distribute premiums, elect representatives and have participate in one of Honduras’ smallest exporting cooperative unions.