Las Panas Cohesión Cocción

About the Organization Contact and Service Areas Successes and Impact Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security Survivor Leadership Understanding Economic Harm in Context

About the Organization

Country

Mexico

Number of survivors served in a year

20 to 50

Languages

Spanish

Groups most commonly served

Disabled persons Members of the LGBTQIA+ community Women Youth, children, or adolescents

Type of organization

Nonprofit or non-governmental organization (NGO) Other non-traditional organization

Program model(s)

Holistic crisis response Rights-based economic justice Survivor-centered income generation Systemic change through strategic partnerships Transforming social norms through community-building

Contact and Service Areas

Email

laspanasmx@gmail.com

Address

Avenida del Taller #24 (entrada por #32), colonia Tránsito, C.P. 06820, Mexico City, Mexico

Service Area(s)

Mexico City, Mexico

Successes and Impact

“Making bread [isn’t] a revolutionary concept that hasn’t been done in other organizations, but I think it is a restorative space that also engages [survivors] on an emotional and affective level, which keeps women coming back, regardless of the year they initially joined. If they continue following us, [it means] they are still listening [and engaged].”¹

Through its comprehensive approach to strengthening economic independence and emotional well-being, Las Panas Cohesión Cocción (Las Panas) has supported many survivors in regaining their sense of agency and autonomy, creating support networks, learning marketable skills, and accessing dignified work in safe environments.

Safer workplaces for survivors

Las Panas partners with restaurants and bakeries that can offer dignified work spaces for survivors who complete their artisanal baking training program. The organization’s approach goes beyond traditional job placement by actively vetting partner businesses and ensuring those businesses participate in training sessions on gender-based violence and supporting survivors.

Simultaneously, Las Panas equips survivors with the knowledge and self-confidence to assert their labor rights and live a life free from violence. The organization explains the value of their approach: “We cannot guarantee violence-free spaces, but we can guarantee spaces that are talking about the issue, that do not shy away from it.”

Taken together, this approach contributes to a more inclusive and conscious work culture and a smoother re-entry into the workforce for survivors. By offering both self-employment opportunities and linking participants with thoughtful businesses, the program not only promotes economic independence but also challenges and transforms traditional structures that can perpetuate economic inequality.

Therapeutic transformations that build economic agency

Las Panas’ innovative approach recognizes that economic independence requires both practical skills and emotional healing. Rooted in a feminist and intersectional framework, the organization combines community-based vocational training with mental health counseling. This integration of healing and economic skills development creates profound transformation in how survivors approach decision-making, including financial decisions. One team member observes the fundamental shift in survivors’ sense of agency that substantiates this approach: “It’s something I’ve noticed when we explore changes [that have occurred] with them—they mention, ‘I now make my decisions with more confidence’, ‘I’m no longer asking a bunch of people around me before making a decision’.”

Las Panas adds: “I think that the greatest impact is this transformation in women’s confidence in themselves, in their perception as rights-holders, and also in making visible the power of support networks. Women feel important again when they come here and feel heard.”

Lasting networks of solidarity

The organization’s “revolving door policy” allows participants to return as mentors, volunteers, or even staff members, creating an enduring support network that extends far beyond formal program completion. Former participants regularly return to support newcomers, demonstrating the deep community bonds formed through shared experiences. These support networks are an invaluable resource for participants. As one team member commented, “Here they have found listening and love, a safe environment,” underscoring the importance of this network in the healing process.

Group activities and affective ties between survivors also open participants to new perspectives and experiences. For example, one team member shared, “In Mexico City, it helps a lot that . . . people talk about the issue, that [survivors] interact with other women, that they also interact with women who, like us, are members of the LGBT community. This changes deeply rooted beliefs about who we [women] are and how we should be treated.”

Survivors’ long-term engagement with Las Panas and with each other also creates tangible career pathways. As one staff member noted, “Just recently a colleague who was here in 2017 came back to do an internship. She is now super engaged with us again—she has already started working in the bakery.” This approach ensures that support extends across years, with participants able to evolve from program beneficiaries to mentors, volunteers, and eventually staff members, creating sustainable career advancement opportunities within the organization itself.

Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security

“When I knead bread, I leave a lot of worries behind, [and] these ghosts inside my head disappear. There is a part inside my being that needed to scream, to come out, a desperate part that found a break. When I make bread I feel free to decide what I want for myself. . . . By coming here, I have found myself again.”

About the Program

Las Panas knows that technical skill is just one piece of the puzzle in building survivors’ economic security and well-being. Their innovative and flexible program combines practical skills development in baking and business with therapeutic support, helping survivors interrupt the cycle of economic and emotional violence. Through their comprehensive approach, survivors gain the tools and support networks they need to build autonomy and financial security.

Program Development and Key Strategies

The organization has designed an ecosystem of programs that helps survivors feel supported, engaged, and autonomous. These are the key strategies that contribute to its success:

Community, healing, and vocational training all coincide in the kitchen
Responsive programming adapts to community needs

Community, healing, and vocational training all coincide in the kitchen

Developing technical skills and entrepreneurial fundamentals in community

This program’s innovation lies in integrating job skills development with a holistic wellness approach by starting community building in a familiar place: the kitchen. Artisan bread workshops serve as a comfortable entry point where participants develop technical skills, including artisanal baking techniques and entrepreneurial fundamentals like project and cost management.

As Las Panas explains, “They learn how to manage their costs. We also reflect on the value of their own work, which has a cost. They can use these tools to start something else that doesn’t necessarily have to be bread, they can even create a joint initiative with other women they have met.”

Baking as therapeutic practice

At the same time, each artisanal baking training session explores wellness tools like meditation and identifying harmful situations, integrating emotional well-being tools into group learning activities. Las Panas also offers four free individual therapy sessions per participant, providing access to healing modalities that are typically financially inaccessible for their participants. The therapeutic power extends beyond formal counseling sessions—baking itself becomes a healing practice. These kitchen-based activities allow participants to release stress through physical and intellectual engagement, process trauma in a supportive space, and reconnect with their sense of agency.

As trust and mutual support flourish, Las Panas layers in additional workshops that cover topics such as workplace rights and self defense. As a result, survivors grow their sense of agency and independence, making this therapeutic approach key to breaking cycles of violence and building pathways to both financial and emotional freedom.

Responsive programming adapts to community needs

Using evaluation methods to adapt to local contexts and changing needs

Las Panas employs a robust, survivor-centric evaluation model to ensure programming remains relevant, accessible, and useful. They learn participants’ attitudes and behaviors toward specific programs via online questionnaires and focus groups, both before and after implementation, and also engage past and present participants to gauge their impact over time.

This systematic approach enables them to adapt when circumstances change. For example, their “Open Ovens” program worked well when the organization operated in the community of La Merced, where survivors used the kitchen space to commercialize their bread for wider distribution. However, when Las Panas relocated, they discovered that the new community and program participants faced different challenges and needed more emotional and psychological support. Las Panas therefore pivoted and began to offer collective skills-building sessions focused on survivor well-being tools like conscious breathing and self-defense workshops.

Monitoring partnerships for positive outcomes

This systematic feedback approach also extends to the organization’s internship placement program, where survivors intern with partner bakeries for short periods of time to gain experience hours and monetary or in-kind compensation. Las Panas uses structured forms completed by both participants and workplace mentors to monitor placements and address any issues promptly, ensuring positive outcomes that often lead bakeries to hire survivors after the internship period is complete. This flexibility demonstrates their commitment to meeting participants where they are, ensuring that programming evolves based on community feedback and needs rather than following a rigid model.

Survivor Leadership

Survivors are at the center of all of Las Panas’ work, involved as key decision-makers, staff, participants, and volunteers, and survivor knowledge and feedback is regularly solicited and integrated into programming. In its recruitment efforts, survivors play an active role in identifying and channeling new participants to the organization based on personal and community connections rooted in trust and shared experience. This allows the organization to expand its reach to other survivors who could benefit from the program. “They refer women to us who they believe can benefit [from our program] . . . because it can strengthen them on an emotional or individual level, or on an economic level,” commented one team leader, underscoring how survivors are a pillar of the program’s outreach and expansion.

Through this survivor-led approach, survivors feel valued and committed to the work of the organization, which leads to lasting engagement. By cultivating a space where each survivor can play a role, whether participant, intern, staff, ambassador, or mentor, Las Panas creates a continuous cycle of community.

Understanding Economic Harm in Context

Las Panas has identified various factors that influence how survivors, especially those with multiple marginalized identities—such as migrants, disabled persons, and members of the LGBTIQNB² (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, queer, and non-binary) community—experience economic dependence and violence:

Economic control in intimate relationships limits survivors’ options and agency
Intersectional identities and job insecurity impact survivors’ access to resources

Economic control in intimate relationships limits survivors’ options and agency

Economic violence in intimate relationships is a critical problem in Mexico, where 19.1% of women over the age of 15 have reported being deprived of financial resources or having their economic resources controlled or exploited by an intimate partner at some point during their current or previous relationship.³ This rate is higher for women with disabilities (28.5%)⁴ and women who speak an indigenous language (20.7%).⁵ Las Panas comments on how economic control profoundly affects survivors’ lives and limits possibilities: “[it] limits their growth, limits their autonomy, limits their freedom to do a lot of other things.” Although the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence is a step toward protection, its implementation remains inconsistent, especially in rural and underserved areas.⁶

Las Panas also observes that their older participants are more likely to have limited exposure to alternative possibilities and opportunities compared to their younger participants, who, in the organization’s experience, tend to enter programs with a relatively higher sense of agency. Given this, Las Panas emphasizes that “psycho-emotional strengthening is very important. Many times, they [survivors] doubt their decisions a lot. . . . Also, their perception of themselves as rights holders who have needs—I believe that is something very important that they also need.”

Intersectional identities and job insecurity impact survivors’ access to resources

Holding particular multiple identities at once can compound the economic harm experienced by survivors. Indigenous and Afro-Mexican women, who represent significant sectors of the population, face additional barriers to accessing resources, justice, and economic security. This increases their risk of being subjected to violence and discrimination in the labor market and in their personal relationships.⁷ Survivors facing economic precarity and IPV may see migration as their only way out. Las Panas speaks to this dynamic, “The issue of money has even caused them to migrate, to move to another country because they are caught up in structural violence that limits them, but also [they are facing] violence from their partners, and they see no way out. Even physical violence has forced them to move to another country.”

The high rate of informal employment in Mexico leaves many survivors, women, and migrants in precarious and exploitative working conditions. Over half of the labor force is employed informally, disproportionately affecting rural residents, most of whom have no protections such as health insurance or pensions.⁸ This economic vulnerability is compounded for those who experience financial control in their relationships: “People start to feel limited in absolutely everything, even in their own activities. They no longer have the freedom to make even simple decisions, like whether they can buy an extra snack or whether they can even leave their homes because they don’t have money. It affects them in different areas of their lives.”

This context of economic violence and financial control underscores the need for programs that offer survivors the tools to achieve economic autonomy, combined with access to reliable and safe healthcare, safe employment, and quality mental health resources.

Notes

Direct quotes are slightly edited for style and flow.
Las Panas uses the LGBTIQNB acronym in their work as it is the most inclusive of the communities they work with.
Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía [National Institute of Statistics and Geography] (INEGI), Violence Against Women in Mexico: National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships ENDIREH 2021, Aguascalientes: INEGI, 2022, 17, https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/programas/endireh/2021/doc/national_results.pdf.
INEGI, Violence Against Women in Mexico, 21.
INEGI, Violence Against Women in Mexico, 23.
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Concluding Observations on the Tenth Periodic Report of Mexico, July 10, 2025, U.N. Doc. CEDAW/C/MEX/CO/10, https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n25/184/25/pdf/n2518425.pdf.
CEDAW, Tenth Periodic Report of Mexico.
International Monetary Fund, Mexico: Selected Issues, IMF Country Report No. 23/357, Washington D.C.: IMF, October 2023, https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2023/357/article-A001-en.xml.