Soap for BEADS

I recevied the best phone call today from Debby Rooney, who is the founder of Beads For Education.  She is over in Kenya finishing up with the 2007 Break the Chains of Illiteracy 100 mile Walkathon.  I planned to leave myself this year to go, but family and work took over…..I’m scheduled to go over to Kenya next year.  BEADS is one of the non-profit organizations that I support – actually a percentage of all of Botanical Earth’s sales goes towards charity works.  You might have seen the hand beaded baskets that are made by the women of the Dupoto Womens Group that Botanical Earth offers.  The baskets are beautiful and new colors for spring should be arriving shortly!  If you go to the BEADS site, they offer all sorts of hand beaded items for sale.

For this trip over, we sent over some 50 pounds of our soap for the girls and mothers to enjoy.  Ms. Rooney sent me the picture of the ladies in their beautiful native dresses and then some of the girls.  Later in the month, I will post my letter from Farja, who is the young girl (age 9) that Botanical Earth helps sponsors through school.  It’s a long term commitment, but one that I don’t ever question.

I have to thank our customer, Alice Eberhard for getting us involved.  She has done the walk for the last 2 years – go Alice!  When she mentioned she worked with BEADS would take any donations of soap, I was more than willing to help.  As a child I grew up in the Middle East and on holiday we would go to Kenya.  It is the only place that I would cry when I had to leave – I love the Amboseli area in particular.  So to know that I could do something as a business too regarding helping girls in Kenya was an honor.  I had friends from Kenya in grade school and college, but all but one has died from the civil unrest throughout the years.

So for now, Botanical Earth sponsors Farja through school close to her home, and will assist her through college if she chooses.  Hopefully, as the business grows, we can sponsor more girls, and the girls in turn will educate their own people on environmental issues, humanitarian rights and AIDS education. If you want to read more on all the happenings at BEADs and to see some great pictures, including Alice’s – go to http://www.beadsforeducation.org/