Our Mission
I am a journalist by profession, with a bachelor's degree in Archeology and Anthropology, and worked for the Anthropological Museum of the Central Bank in Ecuador.
When I moved to America in 2005, I moved for love. You can have everything in life, but if you don't have love, you have nothing. I fell in love with John Thornton, a firefighter in San Diego, CA, and started in a new country, a totally new adventure.
My beginning in America was not different from other inmigrants stories. Besides volunteering at the Archaeological Center in San Diego, I started a small business showing artisan handicrafts from my country in the local farmers markets around San Diego, CA.
In 2009 the live presented me with a trip that changed my mission and vision in life and gave me a sense of purpose , a meaning to my life.
I was doing acquisitions in a small village of tagua artisans in Manabi, Ecuador. It was a time also of one of the most destructive “El Nino” rainy seasons, during a photo shooting of the tagua rainforest trees , I have to drive around rural agricultural towns and discovered that everything was under water, entire villages, rice crops, potato farms, cows and ranch animals where also floating in surreal lakes caused by the flood of rivers and the roads connecting to the city centers where cut with water.
In the middle of the environmentaI disaster, I realized that like in the case of banana , fruit that is an Ecuador exportation staple, which grows in trees, the tagua nut also grows in tall palm trees and under a heavy rainy season, these are the few crops that can be safe and if people have other income like the crafting of tagua jewels, they can survive the lost of their harvest during bad rainy, El Nino seasons.
In that specific moment , my Aha! moment, I decided to commit my life to the mission of creating awareness about organic jewelry and its important role in the preservation of rainforest and the creation of alternative Eco jobs that can provide income to families totally dependent on solely agriculture.
