Madres Jewelry Collective Stringing Together a Better Future

The sisterhood is powerful and bonds over things large and small.

For over a decade, volunteers from Petaluma have traveled to the Dominican Republic to build homes in a rural community near the border with Haiti, part of Una Vida, an organization started by Casa Grande teacher Lynn Moquete.

But this month, a group of local women will travel to the island to teach jewelry-making techniques to Haitian and Dominican women, part of a collective that provides much-needed income for women while allowing them to work from home.

“Research tells us that women tend to spend their earnings on things like school supplies for their children and more nutritious food for their families- things that help break the cycle of poverty,” said Kara Klinge, a Petaluma resident and one of the co-founders of the jewelry collective.

Klinge was only 15 when she first traveled to the Dominican Republic with her class. The trip had a profound impact on her and she returned more than five times. On her last trip, Klinge, now 31, helped start a jewelry collective called Madres, which means “mothers” in Spanish.

The collective seeks to bring Dominican and Haitian women together to overcome a history of distrust between the two groups, the result of Haitian migration into the wealthier Dominican Republic in search of work.

“We wanted to create a way for mothers in need to earn additional income and develop more secure livelihoods,” said Klinge, who worked with Una Vida alumni Tiffany Galindo and Shaylin Riggins on the project.

"Investing in women is investing in the future."

Madres’ jewelry designs were created by Sonoma resident Marcie Waldron, who founded Life Stars, a jewelry collection inspired by her own experience of waiting for an organ donor. Another contributor is Molli Beatty, who works for celebrated Petaluma jewelry designer and will teach women how to create a new line of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

The learning goes both ways.

“Volunteers tend to go in thinking ‘We’re going to teach them so much’, but we always end up learning much more: about life and community building, but also about designs and styles,” Klinge said. “Our work there is very much a collaborative process.”

The group leaves on September 18. For more information on their project, visit una-vida.org