Students
of the Savannah Arts Academy Spanish Honor Society made a difference for the
less fortunate in Nicaragua and Guatemala this holiday season. As part of their community service hours, the
students sold “pulseras” – colorful bracelets woven by artisans in those countries.
The students sold enough bracelets to
raise nearly $1400 in just a few weeks’ time.
The
Pulsera Project is a nonprofit organization that began in 2009 when a group of
friends traveling in Central America discovered a community of artists in the
foothills of Nicaragua that were masters at weaving colorful bracelets called “pulseras”
in Spanish. The artisans had little
market to sell their artwork, so the friends bought some and returned to the
U.S. to sell them.
In
the last decade, the program has expanded to the point that students and
teachers in hundreds of school communities in all fifty states have sold the pulseras
to raise money for artisans in Nicaragua and Guatemala as well. Students empower nearly 200 artists through
the sales, creating sustainable fair-trade jobs in countries where few such
opportunities exist. The funds raised
also go to education and health projects in the Central American indigenous communities.
