The Sisters of the Gala

If you believe education expands possibilities then Las Hermans of Troncones is for you. Started by five women on a sunny afternoon in 2014, the group has made educational opportunities possible for local children since its inception, most notably, funding transportation to secondary schools in La Unión, Pantla and Zihuatanejo. The Troncones schools currently go only as far as middle school, not because of a lack of interest, but because its population is too small to support the structures—the buildings, staff, teachers and learning tools—required by the Mexico’s federal department of education to have a high school. Those requirements are not something that will ever stop the generous, the ambitious or the curious. Troncones has many people like that.

Troncones was a bit different 12 years ago. Steady work was still hard to come by. Tourism and home construction had yet to take hold the way they have today. The only paved road was the town’s main street. Everything else was dirt—pockmarked by holes and trenches—dusty in the winter, muddy in the summer. The idea of making a difference came up over lunch one day, the five women, Ann Merritt, Jill Edwards, Malury Ordas, Wendy Page and Lolo Simpson, discussing what they could do to raise money to create opportunity for the women and children of Troncones.

As Ann remembers it, “We came up with the idea of selling jewelry. We knew we could transport it down here. And it was female, like our name. We thought it could help us attract other female members, you know, add more hermanas. So, we collected jewelry and put a card table out on the sand in front of Mi Casa es Su Casa [now known as Tres Santos]. People bought it. We used that success to keep people bringing more jewelry. More people got into it. That generated volunteers and led us to an opportunity to rent a building to sell the jewelry from a storefront, with our volunteers collecting and selling. After we decided to fund transportation to the high schools, we found ourselves making wooden piggy bank buses, using those for fundraising, putting them in stores to collect spare change, and we were on our way.”

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THE KITCHEN YEARS & BEYOND

Convincing different aspects of the Troncones community that education is an investment for the future was not too hard. The hard part was raising more money so more Troncones children could keep going to school. One Hermana, Debbie Mader, owner of Casa de la Sirena, suggested having a gala and that’s how it started—18 people, including a few men, met for cocktails and bought each other’s stuff, for charity. Again, Ann remembers, “It was so bad that it was good. And we kept doing that for a few years until we got to about 24 people and moved the gala out of Debbie’s kitchen and out to her patio, until we outgrew that and got The Inn at Manzanillo Bay to take us in.”

After capping out at about 40 people each year at The Inn, the board of Las Hermanas decides to go bigger, holding the event at Ann’s house in 2024 and hosting close to 70 people. They also decided to bring in Mariana, owner of Casa Croma and an experienced event planner, to help organize the evening. In describing her role, Mariana said, “When we were at The Inn, I’d been helping with the preparations, the flow, the table settings, the flowers, so I was already involved. Doing it ‘bigger’ meant using my event experience in a new way—to build community.” While increasing the size of the gala promised more revenue from ticket sales, Mariana took on the complexity of entertaining more people and imagining how to get more people to donate, even if they don’t come that night. She added, “Beyond the logistics, I put my effort into what Las Hermanas means, into letting people know about the work Las Hermanas does. People get encouraged by that, which encourages them to get involved.”

THE WORK

Currently, there are about 50 students in Troncones receiving direct support from Las Hermanas to cover transportation costs. Las Hermanas does much more. It’s installed air conditioning in every classroom at the local schools—the pre-school, the kindergartens, the primary schools and the middle school. It’s also fixed the roof at the preschool, built playgrounds, made bathrooms more private and hired a maintenance person to make sure septic, electrical and water systems are working properly. And that’s not all. Las Hermanas has established a library in downtown Troncones and runs after-school programs there, providing out-of-the-classroom support for school work, offering high-speed internet connection and teaching sewing, crafts and computer skills. Whatever can create pathways for the future. That includes furnishing electronics—the laptops, chromebooks and big screen TVs needed for remote learning. “I count that it’s about 300 kids a day that we benefit,” says Ann, tallying up all the students across Troncones and Majahua whose daily experience is improved by Las Hermanas, “and we can proudly say 15 ‘Las Hermanas students’ are currently studying at the university level throughout Mexico.”

There’s also the work of the gala. “I’m taking advantage of what I used to do,” Mariana explains, “I knew I could handle 100 people with no problem. The gala jumped from 40 to 70 in the first year at Ann’s house, which we organized in just a month because another venue fell through. Last year, Richie and Nancy, at Cangrego y Toro, offered their place and we were able to accommodate 120 guests. This year, we’re at Casa St. George and we’re expecting about 90 people. Casa St. George is a beautiful, enclosed space where we can all be together. It’s intimate. This gala isn’t a ballroom affair. It’s a community gathering that happens to raise money. But what it really does is, it raises hopes.”

Each year since she’s taken the lead, Mariana has leveraged her deep connections in Mexico’s food world to bring in a notable chef. Last year was a chef from Kau Kan, one of Zihuatanejo’s most popular restaurants. This year, she’s secured Rodrigo Isaac Serna from Mole Negro in Zihuatanejo. “He’s really, really good,” emphasizes Mariana, “And he was very generous, offering us a great menu. When it comes to the gala’s food, we want everyone to come away having experienced something unique, that’s not the same as what we have every day in Troncones. Rodrigo creates what we call ‘cocina de autor’, author food is the direct translation. It’s a modern, personal re-interpretation of traditional Mexican cooking.”

Through Ann’s connections, Mariana has also brought in a professional auctioneer, Mark Schustrin, who she says, “knows how to manage the people and the donations, how to encourage people to donate more.” In describing Mark, Ann added, “He tugs at your heartstrings. He has a way of making you understand why you’re going to give to a third grader from a family of eight who can’t get to school without help. How an eighth grader needs technology to be able to finish their class work. How a child who came from a family that never went past the fifth grade is all of a sudden in a university.”

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THE AUCTION

The auction has become the gala’s main attraction. The live in-person version gets the gala’s attendees bidding against each other—passionately, at times—during Mark’s dramatic bidding auction and in a more low-key silent auction. This year’s in-person offerings include perennial favorites, such as handmade surfboards from local shaper Craig Johnson, a vacation stay at the Keauhou Kona Surf and Racquet Club in Hawaii, and a five-night stay in a San Francisco home. The other in-person auction items can be somewhat of a last-minute surprise. They typically feature the community’s craftsmanship, ingenuity and imagination—those donations coming from Troncones’ artists, photographers, weavers, makers, carpenters—always exquisite, one-of-a-kind items.

Wanting to connect to the world outside Troncones, Las Hermanas has set up an online auction that starts the week before the gala. Wendy Renner, the online auction chair, handles the technical logistics—the descriptions, photography and details—and how to process payments regardless of where bidders are located. Available online are items such as a ceramic pedestal platter from Mackenzie-Childs, antique batea trays and boxes, black and white photography of Mexican life, and a vacation stay on Friendship Island, off the coast of Maine.

ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS

Some of the gala’s most extraordinary special guests are the children who benefit from the donations made to Las Hermanas. In expressing their challenges and their dreams, Ann says, “They inspire all of us with their passion and hope. They also bring us closer together and that’s what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to build a community that really knows each other and has fun.” Mariana added, “We’re building a community that creates opportunities for its children. In Troncones, we live for tourism. Their education helps us be more prepared for our visitors and provide better services. We all benefit.”

Ann continued that thought, reflecting on the state of Troncones and the work of Las Hermanas, by saying, “A town that has a good educational system has a better chance at being a peaceful place to live and invest. That’s what we have in Troncones. We don’t have people floating in the streets at night. We have kids that get up and go to school the next day, like a normal place. It’s a great place to invest, to be a tourist and to live. It becomes an even better place if we provide a better future for everyone.”

That’s the gala pitch—invest in education, you get a better community. Invest in opportunity, you get safety and stability. Invest in kids, you get adults who contribute rather than struggle. It’s all easy to get behind, but it requires sustained commitment and continual effort. Action. Collecting jewelry, setting up a store, painting buses. And imagination. Asking, “What can we do?”, and then doing it.

For tickets and more information,

visit https://lashermanasdetroncones.com/

For the Las Hermanas online auction, February 4th at 8 am to February 11th at 8 pm, Mexico City (U.S. Central) time

https://pages.snwbll.com/auction/m_RD3jOiOQ8Qua71EHNYtU3A/2026-las-hermanas-online-auction

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