DONNA PAOLA AND THE MAYA WOMEN OF THE YUCATÁN

In 2010, Paola Cinciripini, then legal representative and now honorary president of GSI Marche, a sister organisation of GSI Italia, was working as a volunteer in Mexico, in the Yucatan region. Her annual missions, lasting several months, were in support of the work of El Hombre sobre la Tierra, a Mexican association founded with the support of GSI Italia and the efforts of two volunteers, Sigismondo and Angela – the former from Umbria and the latter from Sicily – who, with the financial backing of the initial projects funded by Italian donors through GSI Italia, launched a development initiative in the region, establishing cooperatives and small family- and community-run businesses in the fields of organic farming, rural tourism, tailoring and ethnic crafts.

And it is precisely in ethnic crafts that our Paola has applied her expertise as a milliner and fashion designer, helping Maya indigenous women to develop innovative technical skills that have enabled the growth, within those communities, of widespread family-based micro-economies, which today, fifteen years on, an agricultural and craft production hub that has earned the commendation of the UN agency for rural development and the Mexican federal government, which, in 2010, recognised it as the seventh best agricultural development programme in Mexico.

Some 16 years on, we have received an invitation from our colleagues, Sigismondo and Angela, to the opening of the local development centre named after our Paola Cinciripini – known as Donna Paola in Cikinsonote, Ciancinilà, Tixcacalcupul and Valladolid.

In congratulating Paola on this well-deserved recognition, we find confirmation of our belief that the abundant and generous love Paola has poured into her relationships with the local people, and in particular with the women, continues to be met today with gratitude and affection from Mexican women towards a deserving Italian woman, for her selflessness and for the gift of craft skills she has bestowed upon them, as well as for the source of income derived from her teachings.

To Paola and her friends Sigi and Angela, we send our warmest regards and our thanks for the excellent work carried out so far on behalf of GSI Marche and GSI Italia in Mesoamerica.