The Reality Our Women Live In

     To truly understand the amount of good that Good Threads does, it’s important to understand the situation of most of our employees.  Most are Haitian immigrants, few with legal documents.  They immigrate to the Dominican Republic, where they endure extreme hardships and discrimination, in the hopes of making a better life for themselves and their families.  Unfortunately, Esperanza offers few opportunities for these women.  Listed below are their options. I want to stress I have yet to meet a Haitian woman in Esperanza who does not support herself in one of the following ways.

Good Threads worker, Leona, shows off her finished stitch of a customer's request for a mountain range.
Her baby girl sleeps on her chest. 

• They can sell stuff in the street, be it food or clothes, and make just enough to get by.  Not enough to feed their families meat, or pay for school supplies or medicine, but enough to pay rent and put something on the table, usually rice or plantains and maybe a few eggs if they are lucky.  In order to sell any items they need working capital to buy the food or clothes, and this is beyond most Haitian women. 
• They can do seasonal field work.  This is inconsistent and low-paying.  On top of being a low paying job, the pay is unreliable. Sometimes a field worker will work for a few weeks and when it finally comes time to get paid the owner of the field will either short them or just not pay.  In this case the women have few recourses to get the money they are owed.
•  They can find a house or two to clean, but again consistency and hours are a major issue.  Cleaning one or two houses one day a week is not going to pay the bills, and full time cleaning jobs are quite rare.  The supply of labor also greatly outweighs the demand for labor.
• They can find a man who works to support them.  This is generally not an option for those with older daughters, as abuse and molestation are extremely common in situations in which a man lives with an older step daughter, 11+ years old.  One of our oldest and best employees, Yansi, is a single mother who will tell you she cannot get a man because her daughters would not be safe if she brought a man into the house.
• The last option is prostituting themselves, which is common place in the community.  I do not believe I have to go into the issues with this job. 

            In a nutshell, they can find sporadic income but jobs with consistent, decent pay are rare.  This creates an insecure home environment, which is damaging to their children and own psyche.  Working for Good Threads not only offers them significant benefits, like access to loans, banking and health care services but is also the best, most consistent paying job they will find.

Our average employee makes about 250% more making belts than they can make in any other job available to them.  The security and peace of mind we offer cannot be overstated.  They do not have to worry that they will not be paid for their work. If rent is due and they are a little short they know we will loan them what they need. When their children get sick, they know we will pay the medical bills and they can get loans to buy stuff to sell on the side.  All of this does wonders in creating a good home environment for their children and significantly increases their self-esteem and confidence.

                Our goal is to help these women and their families and we act in accordance with our goals.  It took some time, but at this point our women know and have internalized the fact that we are here to help them.  This has inspired loyalty; if a woman is slacking or not treating a belt well other women will tell me about it and chastise the offender.  In short, we offer, hands down, the best job any of these women have ever had. They will all tell you that and it is the reason why the list of women who want to be trained to make belts has over one hundred names on it.