DIRECTOR, DP & EDITOR: ANNA ANDERSEN // PRODUCER: ANNA WALLER ANDRÉS
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Pura Utz means Pure Quality — Pure Good, Amazing.
Our name carries many meanings and we are proud to live up to this standard of quality, good and a feeling of amazing. All our products are produced to honor and to create a sustainable income for the incredible women in our team.
We call our business 'an empowerment project', because our values reach beyond the wish to create income — We want to acknowledge the existence and worth of the women we work with. And we want them to feel safe and appreciated.
Our team has grown to about 50 women now. And this is as unfathomable to me as it is to my partner Bernabela. We are so beyond grateful and excited to move forward with our dreams.
Our dream.
Meeting Bernabela was a chance encounter, but such a destined meeting. We both agree we are some sort of soul mates because we share the same dream, and we needed to find each other to make the dream come true. We dream of growing our team to employing more than fifty women, creating high-quality unique products that can sustain themselves in the international market.
We dream of growing so that we can build our own place in Santiago Atítlan. A place where we can work and enjoy the smell of the fresh morning coffee while enjoying the view of the volcano lake. When we have this place, we want to open it to being a place of positive mental health as well. Bringing practices of meditation and the body to the women and children of Santiago Atítlan. With my background in psychiatric nursing it was something I all of a sudden saw myself using a lot of the time in the village. This was consulting family members of Bernabela and friends. I realized how little knowledge and practice there is around this, so this became a common dream for Bernabela and I. We try to practice some guided meditations with the women and talk openly about mental challenges and struggles. But we would love to create the physical and beautiful space for this, so that people from this area can come and share their practice with the women and children. This is the bigger and larger end of the goal - join us on this journey, it might take years, we are in it for the long run.