Lincoln-raised filmmaker Natalia Ledford is a little hesitant to call herself a social activist.
"In a very limited sense, I guess," she says. "At this point I have more ideas than accomplishments, but I'm learning and taking things one day at a time."
Regardless of what she calls herself, Ledford is making a big difference in the lives of domestic violence survivors in Guatemala.
Ledford and her boyfriend run a start-up company -- called Firewheel Designs -- in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, hiring survivors to make handcrafted, high-quality jewelry for a fair wage. Firewheel's goal is to help the women become financially independent from their abusive husbands.
Ledford studied abroad in Quetzaltenango for a month in summer 2012, interning at Nuevos Horizontes, one of the country's two domestic violence shelters.
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The Lincoln High School and University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate went back two summers ago to work for a cause she said she is "not only passionate about but understands well enough to actually be helpful."Â
While interning at Nuevos Horizontes, Ledford said, she learned about gendered violence in the country and how it compares to that in the U.S. She said the biggest difference between the two countries is that domestic violence issues in Guatemala are usually compounded by extreme poverty.
"You can imagine how that would limit a woman's options when she needed to leave an abusive spouse who provides all of her family's livelihood," Ledford said.
The business is already seeing results. An employee Ledford calls Carla joined Firewheel while planning to leave her abusive husband. Eight months later, Ledford said Carla decided she was emotionally and financially ready to leave her husband and move into a new apartment with her son.Â
"She is a testament to the fact that when we invest in women like her, she will reinvest everything she achieves into her children, building a positive, peaceful, bright future for them, which is what ultimately builds strong and healthy communities," Ledford said.
Guatemalans tell Ledford that the country has a machista culture in which men are raised to believe they are superior to women and have control over their lives and bodies.
Not all men are raised that way, she said, but the attitude is present and pervasive.
Ledford sees the women they hire as strong mothers, artists and businesswomen, not victims.
"Their power and their achievements define them -- not the crimes committed against them that they had no say in."
Firewheel chose to sell jewelry because many of the women it wanted to help were unable to perform more skilled tasks.
The company name comes from an article she read about the firewheel flower, which is resilient and one of the first to regrow after a forest fire.
Sarah Gauger has hosted three trunk shows at Lincoln's OMT Divine Resale to showcase Firewheel's products. Gauger said she is impressed with Ledford's zeal for helping tackle the problem in Guatemala.
"Natalia doesn't just sit on the side and watch the injustices in Guatamala and shake her head," Gauger said. "She jumps in and makes a difference."
Ledford has produced two documentaries for Nebraska Educational Telecommunications.
"Path of Displaced" is about five Sudanese refugees and aired in 2010. "Komora: To Heal," about orphan victims of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, aired in April.
"Strong, resilient people, basically, are what the firewheel flower represents to us, and they are the type of people we want to support in any area of the world that we can get to," Ledford said.