CAMPAÑA DE RECAUDACIÓN DE FONDOS EN EQUIPO
Antropóloga Carmen Velasco Hernández (Manager)
Amy Ewing y Craig Thompson (friends and swallows)
What memories and feelings does Oaxaca’s Hotel Las Golondrinas bring up for you? For those of us who work here, it’s no secret that we love our guests. When we see the dates that you plan to arrive, your names fly, like the swallows our hotel is named after, through our three patios, and they sing in fifteen different melodies. And it’s always been this way.
Thirty years have passed since Hotel Las Golondrinas first opened. It’s a small hotel with an enchanting feeling, built and operated out of love and eagerness to serve. From its beginnings we have surrounded our hotel with an agreeable, enthusiastic and hardworking staff, fifteen who have accompanied us for many years.
You almost surely have gotten to know some of them, and if you have, then you even better understand the magic of our hotel. The colorful comfort of the hotel is absolutely the result of the smiles of our employees and, they are like the plants and flowers of our patios that make your stay the best of experiences, they make you want to return — just like the migrating swallows our hotel is named for.
Sadly, March 23 we had to shut our hotel to guests temporarily because of the worldwide health threat of COVID 19, and this has brought us serious problems in coping with expenses. Not just the fixed expenses, like rent and taxes; our major worry has been the income and health security of our staff and their families. As the months have passed, the situation has become unsustainable. Mexico has been unique among similar nations in that there is no help available from the federal or state governments for either small businesses or the unemployed. Small businesses like Las Golondrinas are having major difficulties in surviving, and employees who have to be laid off receive no economic aid at all.
In the face of this, Las Golondrinas’ management would like to create a social shield to cushion the negative impact of this crisis on our staff. The main way we can help them while the hotel is empty is to continue to pay them a salary, even though it’s necessarily reduced, and also thus enable basic health insurance, because in Mexico, not only is there no unemployment insurance, the government free health care becomes unavailable if you lose your job.
That’s the reason that we are asking for some economic help: so that we can continue at least paying a very minimum wage, and its built-in access to basic government health care, for our fifteen staff members, until this economic and health emergency is over. If by chance when this is over we have any surplus funds at all, those will be shared in equal parts among our entire staff.
If you have a staff member you particularly remember, even if you don’t remember their name, let us know so we can share this with them.
We appreciate your attention enormously and please be assured that your Hotel Las Golondrinas is already preparing to receive you, with the best guarantee that you will be safe and in a very comfortable environment, as soon as you can return. We so look forward to seeing you all again.Please feel free to share this with anyone else you know who feels a connection to our small hotel. Any donation, no matter how small, will help our staff in this trying time.
Because GoFundMe doesn’t yet allow Mexican citizens and banks to participate, Amy is creating this campaign on the hotel’s behalf, but all funds raised will be transmitted directly to our beloved hotel’s staff’s accounts. Thank you so much for your help!
Solicitamos ayuda económica para no cerrar las puertas del hotel.
Todavía hay incertidumbre como consecuencia de las políticas de cada gobierno