Sabor del Sol

Sabor del Sol was born from  when a coalition of local and international community members, along with several international NGOs came together and formulated the question: how might we organize ourselves to generate accessible and sustainable work in San Marcos?

The community looked at the resources available. Konojel, JUSTA’s long time partner organization, provided much needed community space and resources. The community group also wanted to harness the appropriate technology resources at Konojel. In 2014, JUSTA, along with NuMundo organized a large project to build a large-scale solar dehydrator, a solar oven, and several rocket stoves in the Konojel Community space!

Harnessing these resources, the newly formed Sabor del Sol cooperative began to learn the process of dehydrating fruits, seeds, and baking cookies in the solar oven.

JUSTA’s mission with Konojel and this newly-formed cooperative is to aid in the development of this regenerative cooperative so that these resources may be used to increase employment, income, and opportunity for those in the San Marcos community.

The cooperative expanded. How can they continue in the rainy season when the solar technologies don’t produce? JUSTA partnered with local business Jed & Marne to provide a series of sewing machine classes for the ladies! Working with sewing machines is seen as a mens’s job whereas weaving is a women’s job. So in this entrepreneurial project, JUSTA was helping to push the glass ceiling! Read more about it on JUSTA’s blog.

Read more about how we organized the initial creation process of Sabor del Sol. A month long series of workshops called Holistic Action Planning for Innovation!