Collective
Corazón Verde
Eight women-led artisan organizations carrying forward ancestral craft traditions — and building a fair-trade system around the women and knowledge behind them.
The heart of it
The system didn’t fit their work, so they built their own — rooted in fair pricing, women’s voices and the protection of cultural knowledge.
The impact, in short
They set the price
Fair pricing accounts for the artisan's labor and production costs, with equal pay for equal work and no intermediaries inside the network's model.
They wrote their own rules
The women created a participatory Fair Trade with Equity certification built specifically around artisan production, gender equity and cultural knowledge.
Fair Trade
Culture carried forward
Ancestral textile techniques and traditional designs are preserved, practiced and adapted without losing their cultural roots.
Craft funds more than craft
Member organizations also work on savings, education, water systems, fuel-efficient stoves, food production and women's rights within their communities.
What it is
Corazón Verde is a network of women-led artisan organizations across Mexico, created to give women more control over how their work is valued, sold and protected.
The network connects fair trade with cultural continuity: women work with ancestral techniques such as backstrap weaving and traditional embroidery, adapting designs for contemporary use while keeping them rooted in the communities and knowledge they come from.
More than a marketplace
Corazón Verde developed its own Fair Trade with Equity approach to reflect realities that conventional fair-trade systems often miss — including gender, cultural knowledge and the way artisan production actually happens.
Women participate in setting prices and defining the terms of trade, while traditional techniques and designs are treated as knowledge belonging to the communities that carry them. The model also connects craft income with wider community priorities, so the value created does not stop at the sale of an object.
The people behind the project
Women of Ya Muntsi Behña + Ñepi Behña
Founding Collective
Her story
Corazón Verde grew from collaboration between women from Ya Muntsi Behña in the Mezquital Valley and Nepi Behña, who were looking for fairer ways to bring artisan work to market. Their collaboration became the foundation for a network built around women-led decision-making and fairer trade.
Follow the thread
Across places and generations, women and their work are connected — through craft, tradition, community and shared experience. Sistra follows those threads.
