Bead for Life, Uganda 2010
DFW Funding: 2010: $20,780
Throw your own BeadforLIfe party! Go HERE to sign up. Follow the steps to register for a BeadParty. When completing the Bead
Party Registration form be sure to type DFW810 into the promo code box, and select Dining For Women for the type of BeadParty/Event.
VIDEOS:
A link to several videos about the beaders and the work BeadforLife does in Uganda: http://www.beadforlife.org/6videos.html
View BeadforLife's DVD, which BFL says, “captures the beauty, energy, and passion of BFL members. In the DVD you will meet the beaders, see where they live, watch them dance, and hear their original songs. Uplifting and colorful, this 13 minute video invites you to get involved in creating a better world.” http://www.beadforlife.org/6DVD.html
For more information see: BeadforLife, Uganda 2009
The Web Site: www.beadforlife.org
The Mission: to create sustainable opportunities for Ugandan women to lift themselves and their families out of extreme poverty by connecting people worldwide in a circle of exchange that enriches everyone.
The Project: Dining for Women (DFW) sponsored BeadforLife’s (BFL) Beader Membership Program last year with phenomenal success. So this year, revenue generated from DFW bead sales will go towards the Beader Membership Program, while DFW donations will support BFL’s newer project: the Shea Nut Retail Project, with all funds going directly to producers/gatherers to purchase Shea Nuts from the members. The core of the Beader Membership program is income generation, putting money directly into the hands of women in Uganda. Members are trained to roll beads and make jewelry and begin to earn a steady income. They also receive health care education, family planning, and mosquito nets. Through the Shea Nut Retail Project, BFL helps impoverished people lift their families out of poverty by connecting high quality products to international buyers. More than 800 women and their families in rural Lira District are earning money by collecting the shea nut. BFL’s shea project pays fair trade prices 25 – 50% above the rates women earn in the local markets, as well as providing other community development initiatives in health and agriculture.
Why We Love this Program: In Uganda, over 80% of the people survive on less than a dollar a day. With support from organizations like DFW, BFL provides opportunities for a better life; Ugandan women (many are HIV positive, widowed or internally displaced) turn colorful recycled paper into beautiful bead jewelry, and people who care open their hearts, homes and communities to buy and sell the beads. The beads become income, food, medicine, school fees and hope. Also, many shea project members were themselves captured or witnessed the killing of their families, and all were forced into camps for Internally Displaced People until early 2008. Often called ‘women’s gold,’ shea nuts provide income that is used to pay school fees, purchase livestock to till the land, and improve homes destroyed during the conflict.
The Dining for Women travel program visited Uganda in March 2010, when 17 DFW members journeyed to Friendship Village and met a number of women whose lives were changed by BeadforLife.
Here is one account of the visit, first published in the Oregonian, from Patricia Andersson,a chapter leader in Portland, Ore:
Amid the tiny corrugated tin shacks, the mountains of garbage, and the torn and dirty clothing are the intact and shining spirits of people who meet my eye, and smile and wave in greeting. This is their community, and I am their guest. Many women who have graduated from BeadForLife's program and are now making a good income continue to live here, not wanting to leave their families and friends. Instead they improve their homes, send their children to school and feed their families more than the typical one meal per day. We visit some BeadForLife graduates, to see the businesses they've built for themselves. One woman has become a landlord, building extra rooms onto her house and renting them out for profit. She greets us with squeals of excitement, throwing her arms around each of us in turn. Although she speaks no English, her pleasure in meeting us needs no interpretation.
"She has been waiting for you to come," our guide tells us. "She is so happy to actually meet the women who supported her at BeadForLife." Although we are behind schedule, she insists on walking us down the railroad track to her newest project -- a small adobe apartment that she has built as a rental. Her eyes shine with pride and we congratulate her on her success.
The highlight in Uganda is a two-day visit to Friendship Village, BeadForLife's housing project for graduates of its beading program. Here we're paired with families that we accompany through their daily events to get an authentic taste of rural life. I am paired with Fatuma, a gentle woman of 40 who lives in a tiny red brick house with her daughter, granddaughter and 5-year-old niece. Every home in the village is identical, their mortgages paid back with beads. Beautiful gardens of banana trees and colorful flowers surround the houses, while multiple strings of beads hang sparkling in the sun, allowing a final coat of varnish to dry. We walk to the village garden, where we harvest our lunch of green beans, chard and sweet potato.
Fatuma cuts some roots from her cassava bush, and we sit on grass mats on the porch to prepare the vegetables. These grass mats are later moved inside, where we sit on the floor to eat our meal. Although my host family owns no tables or chairs, couches or rugs, they seem wealthy to me in ways that matter. Their friendships are many, their community strong and their daily lives are spent with the people they love.
This realization is the essence of my time in Africa, and the essence too of the deeper meaning of Dining For Women's giving circle. We are supporting other women through donations, and this giving comes full circle in all we can gain by strengthening our connection with the rest of the world.
-- Patricia Andersson
