International Day of the Girl

 What an honour it was for us to spend the afternoon  last Saturday at Kwantlen University in Surrey with the girls and women of Global Girls Power. They are a very impressive group of young women intent  on making a better world for us all.

We had our table display of bead jewelry, shea products,  bags and information about supporting Girls Education in Uganda. We presented the BeadforLife work to a whole new audience. Looking forward to working with those who attended the conference, in the future.
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Among the presenters at the conference was Madeleine Shaw, one of the founders of LunaPads, Here is a link to their blog informing us of their work in Uganda.                                              http://lunapads.com/blog/2014/10/one4her-basic-pader-girls-academy/
 So satisfying to know that she has connected with BeadforLife there.

This Global Girls Power  group in Surrey has committed themselves to raising $5000 for a Clean Water Project in India. It is clear to us that  these girls are making a difference. You are an inspiring group. Congratulations.


Our next events will include our twice monthly sale at the River Market at Westminster Quay on Saturday, October 18 and then onto Capilano University in North Vancouver  for the first time. There will be a live streaming there of WE Day, Vancouver http://yourdailycap.ca/the-awesome-power-of-we/  this event  will be on Wednesday October 22. We will have our table display and sale for the high school students in attendance.

Our  BeadforLife online Marketplace is now available and we are excited about  that! 100% of your shopping proceeds will benefit women and girls in Uganda! You can now shop on our page from the comfort of your home if you can’t make it out to our upcoming sales. Check out the new products like aprons, and multi-tiered necklaces. You will see an incredible variety of “recycled paper made” bracelets, necklaces and ear rings. Don’t forget the organic shea products from Northern Uganda

 Visit us or buy online to help us reach our goal!

Your own Online Market Place will be available for anyone who registers for a Bead Party which now will be called a Market Place. It can be used to compliment your in person sales.

We have had an excellent start to our new season as we gave a talk to the CWL women’s group of Port Coquitlam and were inspired by their enthusiastic support. The next day we spoke to two senior classes at Carney Secondary, in Port Coquitlam also. We look forward to mentoring small groups  of these students in the hope that they will choose to promote BeadforLife as their social justice projects in this class.

We have a very impressive group of college girls as part of our team for the fall. Paty joined us for our sales with the women's group. Julia, Melissa and Claudia have all expressed their willingness

to join us as needed.

We will be at the River Market at Westminster Quay in New Westminster from October through Christmas time. Our dates will be the first and third Saturday of each month from 11 am to 4 pm. In addition we will also take part in at least three seasonal craft fairs and our own Open House which we will promote in the coming weeks.

Dear Friends,

Last month, with graduation season fast approaching, we sat down to plan a donation campaign for our Girls Education Program. We thought sending a girl to school in Uganda would be a perfect, meaningful way to honor a teacher or graduate, and we started to write this email to tell you so.

Then we heard the news from Nigeria.

We were heartbroken and shocked by the Boko Haram kidnapping of over 200 female students and are standing by those who are working to #BringBackOurGirls. This horrific crime to deny girls their education and force them into slavery underscores the need for girls’ education programs even more.

As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times says, "We can stick it to Boko Haram by helping to educate a girl.”

Girls’ education correlates to later age of marriage, improved health and child survival, and even higher GDP for a entire country.

We believe that now more than ever, we should stand with girls everywhere, and invite you to stand with us. Now is a time to rally around their ongoing education and to unite in the belief that every girl deserves to dream big.

If you want to donate to our program—which sponsors bright but impoverished girls in Uganda through secondary school—you can donate here. Or you can host a Bead Party in honor of Girls Education—just enter the Promo Code: GIRLS when you register to apply the proceeds directly to a scholarship.

Whether you support our program or engage with other international groups supporting girl’s education around the world, we thank you. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.

Sincerely,

Devin Hibbard
Executive Director, BeadforLife


Our address is:
wwww.beadforlife.org

BeadforLife
2336 Canyon Blvd Suite 202
Boulder, CO 80302






• New Westminster Bead For Life Calendar

• May 17 New Westminster River Market 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

• May 24 Hyack Street Festival Uptown New Westminster 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• June 7 New Westminster River Market 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

• June 8 Sapperton Street Festival, East Columbia St. New Westminster 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• June 21 New Westminster River Market

• June 28 St. Matthew’s Church, Surrey 10 a.m. to noon,

Report on a Great Weekend

We had such a great weekend with the two conferences at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Friday and Saturday. We were an amazing team consisting of both of us and the three Eberle sisters. We were hoping for good sales by promoting education for the girls of Uganda,  by many conversations about Bead For Life and  to make good contacts for the future events.

We intended to emphasize the promotion of education for the girls of Uganda to make our sales and solicit donations.

And we had Great Sales and experienced  a spirit of generosity.

We made excellent contacts: a retreat center that wants to retail Bead for Life items in their small gift store, a Chinese tv cable company from Toronto that may follow up with a feature on BFL and we received two invitations to  f different conventions and to speak for 15 minutes at one of them

Our young women, two college students and a h.s. senior excelled in sales and sharing the story of the Bead for Life women of Uganda. At 5:45 p.m. Saturday, having worked since 8 a.m., they were still demonstrating how to roll beads from recycled paper as the first step to making a beautiful bracelet.  They are eager to do it again. They and Mary Jo were excellent in asking for donations for girls education from interested  people who were not going to buy jewelry on those occasions 

In hindsight what a brilliant decision to have them promoting Girls Education as an effective way of countering extreme poverty one bead at a time. How hard is it to turn down an encouragement to buy a Girls Education Bangle from such fine young women who are exemplary products of good educational opportunities.

We do it all for you, beautiful young people of Uganda, for your mothers and grandmothers.. 

http://www.beadforlife.org/

maryjo.dawe@gmail.com

   We will  be  at the CEC, February 14 and the One Conference, February 15  at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Our work at these events representing Bead For Life will emphasize eradicating extreme poverty one bead at a time through efforts to support  "Girls Education" in Uganda. We feature sales of necklaces, bracelets and earrings made beautiful by the Bead for Life women in Uganda, using the only resources available to them, recycled glossy paper. We also sell  organic Shea lotions, lip balm and soap made by the women in the war torn North of Uganda to support their farming efforts.

   This will be our third year as vendors at the CEC. Come to see our new lines of bracelets, necklaces and baskets. You will be impressed. If you do not want jewelry, make a donation to the girls education scholarship fund. The  best help for a village is to educate its young women.

$4 A Day

To send a girl to the best quality boarding school in Uganda it costs $1,000/year, which covers tuition, room and board and ALL related expenses. It pays for her uniform and necessary sanitary supplies for her to continue class everyday. What a worthwhile investment in an aspiring future leader! 

Our Girls Education program aims to educate and empower the next generation of Ugandan women. We know that each additional year of school boosts a girl’s future earnings by 15 – 25%. Our program pays school fees for girls living in Otuke and Iganga, the rural areas in which we work. Thirty additional students are added to our program each year. All are girls who finish primary school at the top of their classes, and whose families cannot afford to send them to secondary school. Without our sponsorship, most of them would continue working on their family farms and would be quickly married off.

With so many girls in need of education, choosing who to sponsor can be difficult. Recruiting girls in Northern Uganda is particularly challenging because the education system was disrupted by years of civil war; the quality of instruction is also often poor. We look for young women who are highly motivated to change their lives. They know that education is the key to rising out of poverty, and they have demonstrated their commitment to academics.  

Set for success

We believe boarding school is the best option for girls because it keeps them safe by eliminating long distance commuting, and it frees them from household duties. Boarding also allows girls to focus on their education, have electricity so they can study at night, and receive tutoring. We provide girls not only with tuition, but also school uniforms, a mattress, books, a broom, rolls of toilet paper, and a year’s supply of sanitary pads.

BeadforLife is committed to pay for the girls’ secondary education as long as they continue to excel in school. We are excited to see these girls receive the education they need and deserve to change their lives.