In the latest of chaotic hurdles we have been forced to overcome to make this trip possible, the Russian Consulate decided to lose our passports - inconveniently following our expediting our Russian visas.
Oh how the adventures continue.
“I didn’t even really like tea,” says Ajiri Tea’s 25-year-old founder Sara Holby, who now owns and operates a tea company with a reach of over 400 stores in three countries. Despite never previously envisioning herself in the world of business, Sara Holby is a prototype of social entrepreneurs.
Ajri, which means “to employ” in Swahili, was established in 2009 with a single goal in mind: create jobs for Kenyan women.
Now only three years later, Ajiri employs 63 women and uses the profits to send 19 orphans to school.
Ajiri is socially conscious business at its finest—tea is purchased from local, small-scale farmers, and its packaging is handmade by five women’s groups to reflect the Kenyan landscape. Even the boxes themselves are environmentally sustainable, personally designed and crafted from recycled office paper, banana leaves, and harvested water hyacinth—an intrusive plant in Lake Victoria.
Holby stresses her goal of creating a cycle of employment through the company. “The women are there, the tea comes from Kenya, we sell it here, but then the profits go back for them to do it again.”
Farmers and women are given an income with each box of tea purchased, and all the resulting profits are reinvested into Holby’s Ajiri Foundation. All community members who are a part of Ajiri Tea are then able to select the orphans they wish to send to school with the proceeds. “It makes the women and everyone more invested in the project.”
A bit of the funds are also reinvested in a communal fund for which the community can vote on their use. Most of the 63 women have spent their new incomes in their children’s education, larger farming plots and other projects to support their families and communities and have gained greater communal respect in the process.
Not only does it help stimulate the local economy in western Kenya, it’s the embodiment of Holby’s three years of hard work to turn her vision into a reality.
While it’s her full time gig, she has yet to take a profit from Ajiri Tea herself, but still plans on making this project her life’s pursuit.
“It’s just me and my mom, really,” Holby says. But the Kenyan side of Ajiri’s operation is thanks to Sara’s good local friend, Nick. “All this wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for Nick.”
Despite some initial challenges in getting the company up and running, Ajiri Tea has been awarded some of the tea world’s highest honors, and it only continues to grow and complete a self-sustaining cycle of employment and development.
Oh, and just so we don’t forget …
“It’s good tea. Good tea for a good cause. Actually, scratch that—it’s great tea for a great cause.”
Ajiri Tea can be found in Cardullo’s in Harvard Square, South End Formaggio, and Cambridge Naturals in Porter Square, or online for $9 a box or $10 for loose tea.
(Originally published in Boston’s Weekly Dig)
Marry for love? Consider yourself lucky. In Kyrgyzstan, tradition dictates most girls marry upon kidnapping.
Taken by surprise, and sometimes for never-before-seen soon-to-be husband, about one in three Kyrgystan girls under 25 is often forced out of her home by bachelor’s group of friends and taken to the male’s family’s home. Resistance will sometimes last days until the girl concedes, or in worst-case scenarios, finds suicide the only way out.
The groom will address his wife’s family following her kidnapping and look to arrange a bride-price. Families see little wrong with the tradition. It is the women of the groom’s family who often convince the girl to end her resistance.
Despite being illegal since 1994, efforts to end the practice are almost nonexistent.
“Hopefully we can show with our success that you can make money but do good as well,” Project Repat President Nathan Rothstein says.
Rothstein and fellow co-founder Ross Lohr have a simple goal in mind: “upcycle” old t-shirts into fashionable, engaging products while providing fair wage jobs in the United States.
Project Repat combines environmentally conscious products with socially beneficial results. While in its earlier years, Project Repat focused on repatriating shirts from abroad, the founders decided to pivot their strategy to make their project more financially viable and create opportunities for fair wages at home.
“Everyone has a connection to t-shirts,” Rothstein says. For those who don’t necessarily want to wear them or give them away, Lohr says they thought, “why not just do something with them here?”
Project Repat is all about preserving the memories embedded in t-shirts and helping customers connect on an emotional level. The bags, the company’s biggest seller, are made up of five upcycled t-shirts each, with the final product working to emit a distinctive story or idea. Every article is hand crafted for added value, and each is one-of-a-kind.
But Project Repat doesn’t just stop with upcycling.
“All businesses should think about impact,” Lohr says. “We want to get rich, but we want others to get rich as well.”
Project Repat strives to engage all stakeholders in the process and provide fair wages back home. Repat works with North Carolina cooperative Opportunity Threads to prototype and produce all their products. Opportunity Threads is composed of nine Guatemalan immigrants in a town with one of the state’s highest unemployment rates, and most families lie just one or two checks above the poverty line.
“In this country we don’t do a good job of helping lower to middle class people get wealthier,” Rothstein says. “Jobs like this can help with that.”
Project Repat aims to establish a viable business economically, socially and environmentally at home, where hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost to outsourcing. While many apparel companies won’t disclose their prices for labor, Rothstein and Lohr proudly state Opportunity Threads employees earn $14/hour and part-ownership in their cooperative.
“It’s an amazing partnership,” Rothstein says. And as Project Repat grows, so too can Opportunity Threads.
“We’re all about telling the story about T-shirts and their environmental impact, but we’re also about telling the story of U.S. manufacturing over the last fifty years,” Rothstein says.
“We think we can provide more value to the world by giving people the opportunity to make fair wages and make their own economic decisions, which just adds dignity to their lives.”
Their biggest hurdle now is just getting their products into peoples’ hands.
“We want people to feel it, because it’s actually an amazing product and really sturdy,” Lohr says. “We think it’s really powerful: people share their t-shirts and they come back in bag form.”
Interested? Project Repat merchandise is available online at www.projectrepat.org — $25-30 for collection bags and $40 custom designs.
(Originally published on DigBoston.com)
A rare glimpse into the mysterious cult of personality in one of the most isolated countries on earth: North Korea.
Who needs major up-front funding to have success?
The lovely ladies of Kyakasangulu don’t seem to: they’ve got hope, inspiration and enthusiasm. And Empowered Voices doesn’t either.
It started with a desire to help. Not sure where. Not sure how. But day after day, this project has begun to sculpt itself into something beautiful.
I arrived home last night from a typically extra-long day to the most affirming email I could have asked for. Peninah, my Ugandan “sister” and community leader, sent Lene and me the following along with the above flyer.
Your visit to us was a blessing and an opportunity to encourage us
work hard for our children to live a better life than us, we started a
women’s group and named it after you and Lene. We have so far reached
a number of 10 women and we are training hard to and producing a lot
of crafts in order to meet your demand when you start ordering. We
are also trying to learn new methods of farming from the resources at
the district agriculture office to try to earn better to help our
children and our neighbours in the community.
To think this resulted from only a promise and desire to help. We are now speaking with five potential partners, potential donors, and plan to revise our project proposal to cater to the work Peninah and her 10 fellow group members are creating themselves.
What may have been our vision at first has turned into something unique to the ladies, and we hope, ultimately entirely self-sufficient.
One way or another, we intend to make a positive impact on Kyakasangulu.
An interesting look at the racist undercurrents still brewing in the “Rainbow Nation” of South Africa.
