On the evening of February 12, 2012, one of the most special people I have ever known passed away in a rural hospital in Gulu, Uganda.  Sarah Akot was 54 years old; the cause of death was not determined.

The details of her life are not unlike those of many rural women in northern Uganda.  Although born in Kampala, the capital, she spent most of her life in Gulu, a fairly typical African town in the northwestern district of the same name for which Gulu town is the regional center.  It was there that she led a life defined by the challenges and limitations of poverty and, tragically, framed by a brutal 20-year civil war.  It was there that she married, had her children, and each day tapped into the resilience and hopefulness so typical of her Acholi heritage.  And it was there that her innate spirit, her talents and abilities made her a leader of women.

I met Sarah in 2006, when I began a micro-enterprise initiative among several groups of women in the Gulu District.  Some were in the internal refugee camps that had become a daily reminder of the despair and displacement that is so often a result of war.  Sarah and the other town-based women who became part of my Paper to Pearls project were among a small percentage of the Acholi people not subjected to life in the camps, but their lives were tarnished and diminished nonetheless.  A light went out in northern Uganda for two decades, replaced by a malignant shadow of danger, fear, loss, suffering and heartbreak. None of the two million people in Acholiland was spared.

Paper to Pearls was a response to my own heartbreak.  As a visitor to a part of Africa in the midst of “the world’s largest forgotten humanitarian crisis”, I had come to complete an official assignment; I left overwhelmed by what I had seen and with a sense of what might be changed if groups of women could earn an income from handcrafted paper bead jewelry, a product just beginning to be made in Kampala, that was proving saleable in the West.  I reached out my hand to many women during the first months of the project, as possibility turned into reality and 120 women in four camp-based cooperatives and two in Gulu town became part of this new beading initiative.

One hand I held closest was Sarah’s.  How could I not?  Here was a woman with natural charisma, including the most engaging smile and twinkling eyes I’ve ever seen.  She spoke the best English of any of the women in the project and had an innate ability to quickly learn the beading process and help teach it to others.  She was immediately elected the leader of the larger Gulu cooperative.  For six years, the Gulu beaders looked to her for guidance, clarification and encouragement.  When the women felt overwhelmed by what “Mama Barbara” was asking of them, Sarah reassured them.  And if she could persevere so that all her beads and necklaces would be of the quality I was requiring, they could do the same.  She lifted spirits with her light-heartedness, and helped my project managers understand the women’s concerns.  Oh, Sarah, what would we have done without you!  And why couldn’t I have had five more of you in the other cooperatives.

In April 2011, Sarah Acot, child of Uganda, but natural citizen of the world, stepped on an airplane headed for Washington, DC.  She had never left Uganda before.  As the result of a generous invitation from Stacy Sindlinger, director of Lindblad Expeditions’ Artisan Fund, Sarah would soon be in the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador.  There she would teach secondary school children and artisans in two Galapagos communities how to make beads from recycled paper.  But first she wanted to see “America” and, especially “Obama’s house”.  She was a tourist and unofficial representative of northern Uganda for two days. During that brief time she made many new American friends, bestowed gifts brought from home on those she met and charmed everyone with her graciousness and bright spirit.

Accompanied by myself and my Gulu-based project manager, who had traveled with her from Uganda, Sarah arrived in the Galapagos after a stopover in Ecuador’s port city of Guayaquil.  I’m not sure that she learned to pronounce Guayaquil, but she loved identifying her final destination as “Galapagos, Ecuados”. The Lindblad invitation represented the way the adventure travel cruise company has chosen to “give back” to the communities they regularly visit.  The beads that the Sarah taught her new students to make would not only emphasize the value of recycling, but would be available in local shops and on the Lindblad ships, with a portion on the on-board sales going back to the community.

Sarah pitched into her assignment with enthusiasm.  A natural teacher, she demonstrated and explained all aspects of the bead rolling and finishing process to students who were as eager to know her as they were to learn to make paper beads.  The school students, who had never met an African before, wanted to sit close to her. Participants in her adult classes wanted to have their pictures taken with her.  All were moved by her life story of perseverance in the face of hardships they could only imagine.  Each set of classes ended with Sarah dancing to a traditional Acholi song, with everyone clapping and joining in.

During non-class time, the teacher became the student.  Half a world away from the only life she had ever known, a world of wonder opened before her.  The plane trip, of course, and lunch on board ship.  The Galapagos tortoise, flamingos, sea lions, ice cream, spaghetti.  How do you like spaghetti, Sarah? A smile and a big thumbs-up.  Walking into the Pacific Ocean. “Do you know”, she would tell people upon her return to Gulu, “that the Pacific Ocean is bigger than Uganda?  In fact, it’s bigger than all of Africa!”  I often wondered, during our six days in the Galapagos, if Sarah felt she was in a dream.  But the hugs she received from everyone when we left would have felt very real.  And the photos she took home with her, with which she entertained friends and family for hours, verified a true adventure.

What seems far less real is that Sarah is gone.  Morgan, my project manager who spent a year with Sarah and the other women, spoke of the void she left behind. “I can’t imagine Gulu without her.  She filled every aspect of life there.”  Annette, a friend and associate who sold Paper to Pearls jewelry to raise money for a women’s support group in Congo, and who hosted Sarah during her Washington visit wrote a lovely testament to her new friend.  In it she states: “I am saddened that our friendship was cut short and that I will never be able to accept her invitation to visit her at her home in Gulu.  Please reassure her loved ones there that Sarah, her kindness, her joy, and certainly her jewelry and the gifts she bestowed upon me will always stay with me”.

God’s speed, dear Sarah.  You are now dancing with the angels, and we are left to live the dream without you.  “Did you know Sarah Akot?” I want to ask.  “She was bigger than Uganda.  In fact, she was bigger than all of Africa.”

To many, New York City is the fashion center of the United States. Some might even say the world.

A recent trip to Manhattan showed that the paper bead phenomenon has reached the Big Apple!

The photo of the window display was taken in Chelsea Market.

The other two are from a store near Tompkins Square Park called Sustainable NYC.

Be sure to check out our online store and become the next fashionista!

Nicole Gauvin, P2P Social Media Marketing Intern

I grew up in Canada. Went to high school in Hamilton, Ontario for one year. Moved to St. Joseph, Michigan for two years. And then spent my last year in Beijing, China.  I’ve traveled to France, Germany, Singapore, Thailand, Mexico and to many states around the U.S.

And yet I was still surprised when Barbara told me that not only is the internet spotty in northern Uganda, but half the time they don’t have electricity at all!

It’s amazingly easy to forget that there’s a whole world out there when you’re busy living your life, day in and day out. How routine it all becomes. Boring. Empty even.

Until one day, you start to wonder, is this it? Could life be better? Could I be happier?

Numerous studies have shown that volunteering may be the key to happiness. That helping someone else is a way to help yourself. It’s with this in mind that I began looking for a project that I could contribute to.  I wanted to find a way to use my social media marketing skills to help a worthy organization succeed.

I found Voices for Global Change on Idealist.org. Not only did the position appeal to me but their story as well.  Soon I was checking them out on Facebook, subscribing to their Twitter feed and following them on LinkedIn.

This was an organization I could support!  Not only would I be exercising my social media marketing skills, I would be helping the Acholi women in Uganda to earn a fair wage and having a meaningful impact on their lives.  Truly a step towards happiness and meaningful work.

An ironic component of this phenomenon—at least in Uganda—is the implication that these beads are somehow a Ugandan “tradition”.  As one web site I saw recently put it: “We were very impressed with the Ugandan craft of paper beads.”  I had to smile.  This ‘craft’ in northern Uganda is literally only five and a half years old, introduced by Paper to Pearls in January 2006, at a time when Bead for Life and a handful of indigenous groups were making paper beads in southern Uganda, principally in Kampala, the capital.

Northern Uganda has no real craft tradition.  Since it has always been a land of subsistence farming, any ‘crafts’ such as baskets or pots, were roughly and quickly made to hold or carry agricultural products.  When we started P2P, I remember wondering if our women would ever learn to roll paper strips with consistency and quality.  Of course, over time they did, and have been the ones teaching the women who now bead for the other projects in the North how to produce the wonderful beads that everyone loves.

And that’s the good news—that from the introduction of paper bead making to Uganda in or around 2002, hundreds of women throughout the country have benefited from an old craft tradition.  Not their craft tradition, but nonetheless, one that is making a major difference in their lives and in the lives of women beyond their borders.

Below: The evolution in P2P beads

The first assignment at a new job is usually the most difficult. This blog post is my first assignment as an intern at Paper to Pearls, and it is proving to be a bit less challenging than originally conceived – maybe because this is all about me!

I often have to remind myself that things are not always about me, and Paper to Pearls provides a humbling experience that reminds me how trivial my trials and tribulations are when compared to the journey of the northern Ugandan women.

My path to Paper to Pearls has been unfolding for the past 24 years. A native of Richmond, VA I traveled to the land of sweet tea and seersucker to earn my BA in journalism and mass communication from the University of South Carolina. While at USC, my interest in nonprofits was piqued and my passion has been growing ever since. Upon graduation (and a trip across the country), I began working at 1708 Gallery in Richmond. This space combined my passions for art and nonprofits in a seemingly perfect blend, but I had a craving for a bit of adventure. Asia was calling my name!

First stop was Seoul, South Korea, where I spent a year teaching English to a wonderful group of children. This opportunity afforded me the adventure yearned for, as well as the chance to be active in the world of nonprofits through a foreign perspective. While in Seoul, V-Day became my organization of choice, as we worked to support the marginalized women of Korea.

After a jaunt around Southeast Asia, I returned to Virginia, although this time a bit further north. I landed at Paper to Pearls through what seems like luck. The organization combines everything I love – nonprofits, green living, providing support for the voiceless and art. I look forward to my time with Paper to Pearls and whatever may come next!

Elephants with friend in Thailand.  Ugandan elephants haven’t met Zach…yet!

Google Reader allows you to subscribe to the Paper to Pearls blog using the RSS feed. You can easily share individual blog posts with others by simply emailing the post to them right from Google Reader!

Adding the RSS feed is easy. Here’s a step-by-step how-to:

Log into your Gmail account. At the very top left of the page, there are several links. “Reader” is the fifth one. When you click on that, you will be taken to your Google Reader. At the top left, three rows down, there is a button: “Add a subscription.” When you click on this, a box will open asking you to “Enter a search term to find feeds or paste a feed url.” Copy in the feed url: http://papertopearls.org/blog/?feed=rss2

“Paper to Pearls” should now show up in the left column. When you click on that link, the blog posts should appear on the right and you can read them from there!

At the bottom of each post there are several links. The fifth one is “Email.” When you click on that, an email message opens up with the entire blog post in the body of your email. From here, you can share it with anyone!

We all do what we can to be green.  Some of us take our own reusable bags to the grocery store.  Others compost our kitchen waste, make our own cleaning products, and purchase organic, locally grown fruits and vegetables.  It doesn’t matter how eco-friendly you are, as long as you are aware of how important our environment is and that you take steps to help protect it.  But did you realize you can be eco-friendly with your clothing and accessories too?  That Paper To Pearls jewelry, made from recycled paper and  with a non-toxic, acrylic finish is eco-friendly?  Although the beaders that make such meticulous works of handmade art aren’t concerned with fashion in their own everyday lives, they are creating eco-friendly fashion accessories for women around the world.

So where can you find eco-friendly clothing to which to add your Paper to Pearls necklaces?  Just about anywhere!  There are so many online sites that you can check out, and I bet you’ll be surprised that the clothing is no more expensive than clothes you’ll find at the mall.  Buy Green sells not only clothing and accessories for the entire family, but also items for your home, work, and leisure. LooptWorks sells 100% upcycled clothing; meaning that they use top-quality, excess materials and components that already exist to make limited edition pieces that are each hand-numbered, making each piece a one-of-a-kind collectible.  Simple Shoes makes shoes for the entire family out of sustainable materials (like hemp, old car tires, recycled carpet padding, and eco-certified suede and leather).

But eco-friendly doesn’t just mean the materials used to make the clothing!  Selling, trading, or using hand-me-downs is eco-friendly.  Same as buying clothing at thrift shops or garage sales.  Your current clothing may not be made from eco-friendly materials, but care for it properly and you enjoy it for years, and that’s eco-friendly, too!  By shopping for green, eco-friendly fashions, you are supporting both rapidly growing organic agricultural and upcyled industries throughout the world. YOU are making a difference!

Links:

Buy Green: http://www.buygreen.com/

LooptWorks: http://www.looptworks.com/

Simple Shoes: http://www.simpleshoes.com/

* Natalie Hoage is the stay-at-home-mom of three children: her 3-year-old son and 1-year-old twin girls. She writes Mommy of a Monster and Twins, which is all about the day-to-day chaos that comes with chasing three kids in three different directions, usually all at the same time. In her free time, which she rarely has anymore, she reads, writes, cooks, gardens, drinks wine, and works as a freelance writer and social media consultant.

When my grandfather passed away a year ago, I really wanted only one thing from his possessions: a plaque that sat in my grandparents’ kitchen for years that read, “Fix it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”  I’m not sure why that spoke to me like it did because I wasn’t necessarily very good at doing any of those things.  I was successful in obtaining the plaque, however, and as it sat on my bookshelf in the coming months I can say it truly made a difference in how I viewed buying new objects and throwing out old ones.  Since moving to Uganda though, I have learned I still have a long way to go.  It seems to me the concept was born in Gulu, and every day I am amazed at the resourcefulness of people here.

I brought a cheap pair of Old Navy flip-flops with me from America and it didn’t take long until one day, one of them broke.  “I guess I will have to throw them out and find a new pair in the market,” I told my Acholi friend, Concy.

“NO-ooo.  You will fix it,” she told me.

Fix it? I thought, this cheap piece of plastic? Is that even possible? Indeed, there was a shop right up the road that fixed my little flip-flop for about $0.15.  At that point I got it; why would I buy new ones when I could fix what I had?

As far as “wear it out” goes, the best example I see of that daily is clothing.  Almost invariably what people wear is second-hand.  Of course, sometimes it’s rather tragic to see people wearing something that barely resembles clothing anymore, but I often find myself watching a beautiful young Ugandan woman walking by and thinking, “Oh, cute top!  Where’d you find that?”  Of course I’m not suggesting one should wear clothing to the point it is falling to pieces, but most of what people wear here I have a hard time believing someone in the western world thought was used enough to give away.  While most of what is donated to Good Will is, in fact, sent to Africa, I have a whole new perspective on shopping at thrift stores.

Among the many instances of “make it do”, my favorite is the transportation of goods.  During my first week in Gulu, I stayed in a hotel located on a fairly busy street at the edge of the open-air market.  I laughed every morning as I sat eating breakfast and watching the bustle around me – particularly the wheel-barrows, motorbikes, and bicycles carrying loads four times their size.  They looked like ants scurrying back to their ant-hill with their enormous loads.   Think you need a truck to move a mattress or two?  Think again, all you need is a motorbike.  Just this morning I saw a man transporting a load of 2x4s twice the length of his bicycle.

That brings us to “do without.”  For better or for worse, “do without” is pervasive here.  People are often forced to go without the necessities in life – shelter, food, clothing, education, etc., and these are pains in life no one should have to suffer, pains we would all like to alleviate.  On the whole, however, I think we could all take a page out the Ugandans’ book and do with a little more “do without” in life.  Do without the latest electronic gadget when we already have one that works just fine, do without buying yet another handbag when we already have a closet full of them, do without the superstores full of stuff that is unnecessary, unneeded, and will eventually find its way to clogging up our landfills.

I love America.  I love that I have the freedom to choose there, and indeed I believe that variety is often the spice of life.  I do believe though, that with that freedom of choice, it is important to make a choice that will benefit the earth and our neighbors across the globe.  I believe we should all try to do as the Ugandans do and make the choice a little more often to fix it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!

Photo: Making do!

The good news for our beaders is that Paulette has begun placing significant orders for our loose beads.  It seems that paper beads have reached the bead market and customers are responding in a major way.  Paulette had heard about Paper to Pearls and the quality of our beaders work, and was eager to meet her distributors’ requests for paper beads that would a natural accompaniment to the Kazuri beads in color saturation and sheen.  As I write this, our beaders are working hard to meet the deadline for Paulette’s first order. I’m sure they have in mind the significant additional income this opportunity represents for them.  It could not come at a better time, as our women rebuild their lives and look to better future for themselves, their families and the entire Acholi community.

Kazuri Beads

Kazuri Beads USA is also a women’s empowerment project.  Visit their website at: www.kazuribeadsusa.com

And, as always, we invite you to share our blog article with you friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Those she taught now have an opportunity to create paper bead jewelry that will be purchased by Lindblad Expeditions and sold on board their ships, with 5% of profits returned to the beaders and their communities.

Sarah, meanwhile, has returned to Uganda, with photos and endless stories to tell, and the satisfaction of knowing she has helped make new income opportunities possible for people half a world away.

Project Manager, Morgan, with Sarah and the Pacific