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Greetings from Bead Amigas! |
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Beading for a
better future
OUR MISSION
Bead Amigas believes that through art, education, and entrepreneurship, the poorest women in the world can lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
OUR GOALS
In Amigos' villages, women and their families
will have access to
1. Adequate water, food, and shelter.
2. Basic health care.
3. Primary and Secondary education.
4. Micro-enterprise and jobs.
5. Art, creativity, and beauty.
Habersham Sunrise Rotary Club, District 6910
Lowe's of Cornelia and Gainesville, GA
Piedmont College
Demorest, GA
Prince Precision Products
Macon, GA
Windstream Communications
Cornelia, GA
A special thanks to the anonymous donor who made it possible for many Nica children to have the
most basic school supply: a desk. | |
Thank you for your interest in Bead Amigas. We are a volunteer initiative of Amigos for Christ that helps women in the poorest Spanish-speaking country in the world generate life-sustaining income by handcrafting beads from recycled paper. 100% of the net sales go to pay the women directly, to provide materials and training, and to fund community development projects.
This emerging cottage industry not only provides jobs, but provides the women a rare opportunity for leadership and self-determination.
We invite you to join us in this transformation.
Blessings,
Rosann, Allison and Rachel
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Bead Amigas Spring Update By Rosann Kent, Project Director |
This project has exceeded our wildest expectations! Here are just a few of the major milestones of the last three months.
Beaders are earning money.
What began as a craft project in June 2008 is now producing vital income for four beaders. Four more women have enrolled in the program and will soon have the opportunity to earn about $50 a month. In a country where the average income is less than $2 a day, this extra income means the difference between a hungry child and a healthy one.
First Bead Amigas graduate from Level One training
From left: Maria, Allison, Ana Rosa, Rachel, Darling,
Jessica, Maria, Fatima, Rosann
Launched Teach Amigas. We believe that education is the instrument to help people move ahead and improve their lives and communities. Teach Amigas is a new project spearheaded by teacher educators from Piedmont College in Demorest, GA. Our goal is to establish collegial, professional long-term relationships with teachers in two Amigos schools to share teaching ideas, develop materials and resources, and honor the work that the teachers do.
If you are an educator and would like to know more about Teach Amigas, please contact Dr. McFerrin at jmcferrin@piedmont.edu. |
Meet a Bead Amiga By Rachel Elledge, Nicaragua Field Coordinator |
Fatima del Rosado Medina Pichardo
My dream is that my children will have the opportunity to finish school and succeed in whatever they want to become. I would also like to be able to afford electricity and a refrigerator so I can open a small store from my home selling groceries.
Twenty-five year old Fatima lives in a three-room home with five others.
* Nimer, her husband.
* Yefrin, a three-year old daughter
* Nimer, her six-month old son
* Cristina, her nine-year old niece
* Grandfather Gregorio.
Her family is one of the lucky ones as her husband has a job.
He works as a security guard in Chinandega and earns
the equivalent of $170 a month. Fatima stays home
caring for the children, keeping house, and now, beading.
 Fatima was one of the first women involved in Bead Amigas. In June of 2008, Fatima came to participate in our craft project, not knowing that it could someday turn into an opportunity to provide for her family.
"We explained to the women that they could keep the bracelets [that they had made from recycled paper beads], give them away as gifts, or sell them back to us," remembers Allison Morris, Creative Coordinator for Bead Amigas. "Of the dozen or so women who came that week for the
craft project, three produced jewelry for us to buy.
Fatima was one of these women."
Since then Fatima has stayed committed to the program, participating in every training session and received a
Bead Amigas graduation certificate. Not only are her
beads absolutely gorgeous, she has also shown incredible
creativity and artistic expression. Although she is very
quiet and soft-spoken, she has emerged as a leader of
the group and the other women look to for guidance.
We are so grateful to have her in Bead Amigas! |
How you can help Fatima By Allison Morris, Creative Coordinator |
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Give time. Make Bead Amgias an intentional part of your mission trip.Rachel Elledge, an Amigos long-term staffer can arrange a visit
with the Nica beaders. They can share with you the art of paperbeading. We have so much to learn from these women who are joyful despite their circumstances.
Buy our creations. You can buy the Nica-made bracelets at the Casa Blanca (the Amigos mission house in Nicaragua). These colorful stretch bracelets make great souvenirs. Treat yourself to higher-end jewelry featured at selected galleries and at the Amigos for Christ festival in October. Our plans also include bead parties in which we send you bracelets and info on Bead Amigas and you invite friends to come learn more about the Nica women. Stay tuned!
Give expertise. We welcome master beaders with expertise in design. We also need photographers, videographers, computer geniuses and marketing whizzes.
Hold a broken jewelry drive. We will "upcycle" stones, glass, and charms to accent the Nica-made paper beads.
Collect paper. We currently need wallpaper sample books, large format calendars from heavy-paper stock, and maps.
Give gift certificates. Our most expensive costs are poly-acrylic from Lowe's and our accent beads, string, and findings from Fire Mountain Gems.
Give cash. Your generosity enables us to launch this project; with your contributions we buy materials, tools, and training for the beaders as well as fund community development projects that focus on education such as Teach Amigas. |
Introducing Teach Amigas
By Jane McFerrin, Dean of Education, Piedmont College |
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Rosann Kent (left) and Allison Morris (right) display the banner Allison made for Teachers' Appreciation Week.
Why Teach Amigas? It happened when I heard the story of David in Villa Catalina who was about ten years old and still in the first grade. He followed Rosann around repeatedly saying "teach me and only me."
As a teacher educator at Piedmont College, I could not get those words out of my head and started repeating them to colleagues, teachers, and future teachers with a wish for all of us that we would have students with such a deep hunger to learn - even while living in the midst of great poverty.
As those words continued to resonate, an idea emerged, and a group of eleven women from North Georgia traveled to Nica to work with teachers in two rural schools in Villa Catalina and Los Rotarios.
At first we were overwhelmed by the challenges they faced - overcrowded classrooms, students without books or even the most basic supplies, lack of curriculum materials, and low pay and many more.
Then as the days passed, we exchanged teaching and classroom management ideas and created materials to use in the classroom. We ate, sang, cried, and laughed together. We made lists of supplies needed in the hopes that we could somehow get them delivered.
We concluded the week by celebrating the work the teachers in these schools do under extraordinarily difficult conditions and left with the beginning of a plan to continue working together.
Our goal is to help develop schools that lift children out of poverty and overcome the lack of equity in Nicaragua. We want to fill the need of that child who is compelled to say "teach me and only me" | |
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Want to join our beading circle? Please contact us!
Rachel Elledge, Nicaragua Field Coordinator, rachel@amigosforchrist.org
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