The beaders whose stories you see here are amazing, strong women who are working very hard to make the jewelry making project a success. As you will read many times in their individual stories, the money they earn is lifesaving for their families. In an area where many children do not survive childhood, this income greatly improves the chances that their children will be able to grow up. And the support the beaders receive from each other as they work together has become one of the most important things in their lives.

Many women in this area have either been widowed by AIDS or have been abandoned by the fathers of their children and are left to raise them alone. They live in terribly impoverished conditions in one of the “informal settlements” of South Africa. An informal settlement is fundamentally a shanty town, most commonly an extension of a township, one of the black areas which developed under apartheid rule. Although townships are more developed and have infrastructure, the informal settlements have neither infrastructure nor even the most basic amenities.

In these areas, it is common for an entire family to live in a tiny shack made of rolled tin, perhaps 8 X 10 feet, with no sewage and no running water. The floors may only be dirt. The only toilets are the holes in the outhouses nearby. The only water is brought in to community tanks which, only if they are lucky, may occur once each week. Family members will have to walk long distances to haul water back to their shack. At best, food may consist of just a cup of cornmeal gruel eaten once each day. And at this level of poverty, not even that is a sure thing.

Because of the isolation and overwhelming poverty of this area, finding a job is often almost impossible. The women chosen for the beading project are those whose need for income was quite desperate. They were malnourished themselves and not able to find a way to properly care for their children. The ability to feed their growing children the diet that a child's body needs was nonexistent.

With the H.O.P.E. project, they have learned the ancient African skill of making beaded jewelry and are now able to earn money to feed and clothe their children and themselves, and have a valuable skill that gives them hope for security.

When you purchase jewelry through H.O.P.E., you are reaching your hands across the oceans to take the hands of these remarkable women, offering them realistic hope for the future for both themselves and their families.

For more in-depth information on how these impoverished communities came to be in South Africa, the living conditions in which these women and children currently exist, and the role that an economic upliftment project may play in changing their lives, please Click Here

Khethiwe Xaba, 22.
“I can dream while I bead. There are
ladies to talk to and get advice from.
And it is good just to be with each
other. If I need anything, someone in
the group is always happy to help me.”
To read more Click Here