Tag Archives: women’s issues

Prosperity Candle: Passionately Growing One Candle at a Time

25 Jan

In April 2010, a few weeks before Mother’s Day, Prosperity Candle founders Amber Chand, Siiri Morley and Ted Barber drove from their Boston office to JFK Airport in New York City to pick up their first ever shipment of candles. These candles were made by 50 women – “chandler-entrepreneurs” – living in war-torn Baghdad, Iraq. This was the first test – would the candles survive the journey? Apprehension was quickly replaced by pride and joy at the sight of perfectly made, unscathed candles. They made it, and for the first time Chand, Morley and Barber saw the fruits of their labor. “As of today”, wrote Morley, “50 women in a place of conflict have been given the opportunity to start their own businesses.”

Abeer, Iraq

Through candle-making, Prosperity Candle is providing women who live in regions ravaged by armed conflict, and human and natural disaster with an opportunity to rebuild their lives and share their stories with the world. Launched in 2009, this small (but growing) social enterprise has had a tremendous impact, one candle at a time. Their mission is bold but they’re finding success in a simple philosophy: “Every candle is a vehicle for social change and global connection.”

After that first shipment, sales would provide the next important test. Mother’s Day, just around the corner, provided the perfect opportunity to launch the product. Each candle is sent with the name of the maker on the label. The receiver can then go online to Prosperity Candle’s Voices to read the chandler’s story and even send her a message. There was an outpouring of messages from mothers across the US who weren’t simply enjoying their candles but deeply affected by the woman-to-woman connection the gift enabled.

With an effective supply chain, the final test was that of their guiding philosophy: How did these women, living in one of the world’s most dangerous cities, feel about their new business? After their second shipment, Prosperity Candle touched base with Women for Women International, its partner in Iraq. Once again the feedback was positive and heart-felt. Most notably, Morley asserts, these women believe that their candles fulfill a higher social purpose and are enabling them to connect with others across the globe.

(Read their inspiring testimonials here.)

Prosperity Candle has since begun working with women refugees from Burma and Bhutan who have resettled in West Springfield, MA. The company is also exploring opportunities in Haiti, Rwanda and Afghanistan, and developing partnerships with larger organizations – both for- and not-for-profits – that share their mission.

Naw, Moo Kho, Mee Mee, West Springfield, MA

This young organization has completed an astounding ten Catchafire projects. We’re extremely proud of the pro bono professionals who have worked with Prosperity Candle to help them build capacity, share their story and make an impact. Morley says her Catchafire professionals have provided the organization with “energy, expertise and objectivity,” three qualities that a young social good organization thrives on. She also noted that great pro bono professionals not only provide much-needed skills but also a shared passion for their cause, and a sense of flexibility that a growing organization needs. Morley talks fondly of pro bono professionals like Stephanie Leydon, a communications specialist, who comfortably and effectively “put herself in our shoes” to meet their specific needs and of others, like copywriter Sara Buschkamp, who, in their initial meeting, eloquently stated, “you can’t read the label from the inside of the bottle” and provided the organization with new energy and a fresh perspective.

Prosperity Candle currently has a blog that’s integrated into their WordPress website. They’re looking for a technically-skilled and creative pro bono professional to help them create a playful, spirited and reflective WordPress blog that’s distinct from their website. Click here if you’re interested in being a part of this organization’s incredible narrative.

Tackling Women’s Issues in Boston and Abroad

14 Nov

Last Friday we proudly announced our Boston Founding Members, the first 30 Boston-based organizations to join Catchafire. Today we’re in the Massachusetts capital to welcome them in person and celebrate their membership. Over the next few days we’ll be sharing their stories in a series of blog posts. Today we’re featuring three of the Founding 30. Covering education, healthcare and gender equality in the US and Africa, these three terrific organizations are tackling women’s issues in their own unique way:

The Science Club for Girls (SCFG) provides educational programs for girls in underrepresented communities. More specifically, these programs focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) for K-12th grade girls. All the programs are free and the girls work closely with mentors who foster leadership, and promote tertiary education and careers in science and technology. SCFG was founded in 1994 by two parents concerned about gender equality in STEM-based industries. Today it serves over 1,000 girls in five cities across Eastern Massachusetts and in Pokuase, Ghana.

SCFG was recognized with one of six national MetLife AfterSchool Innovator Awards in 2010 and was a recipient of the Nonprofit of the Year award from the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce in 2009.

Interested in volunteering as a mentor with SCFG? Read more here.

In 2001 Megan White Mukuria, a New England native and Harvard graduate, traveled to Kenya on a one-way ticket. Her mission: to start businesses for street children. She quickly became a global leader in the issue of menstruation management, having witnessed first-hand the impact of this issue on women in Kenyan society. Fast-forward six years to 2006, Megan founded ZanaAfrica, a public charity that promotes African-led innovation in the areas of healthcare, education and the environment to achieve sustainable and replicable solutions to poverty.

ZanaAfrica now has two major programs underway:

    • Sanitary pads: Each month 868,000 Kenyan girls miss 3.5 million school days. The free distribution of environmentally friendly, locally made sanitary pads is helping to keep Kenyan girls in school.
    • Empowerment and EmpowerNet Clubs: With the help of mentors, these clubs help primary and secondary students to make informed decisions about their sexuality and other important life choices. These clubs include a Microfinance-for-University program crafted to help schoolchildren get into and stay in university.

The organization is always looking for future donors and volunteers. Follow the links to see how you can support their cause.

The Komera Project is alleviating poverty in Rwanda by providing girls with secondary education. These girls, who otherwise would not have received an education, are improving their earning potential, their health and their sense of self-worth. With each additional year of school boosting a girl’s potential earnings by as much as 15 – 25%, The Komera Project is also effectively elevating the position of women in a post-genocide Rwanda where they represent 65% of the population.

How did it start? In 2006, Margaret Butler, a primary school teacher, spent the year in a remote Rwandan village. During this time, she hosted a girls-only “fun run.” At the start of the first race, the crowd cheered “Komera” – “be strong and courageous.” Ten of the runners went on to receive scholarships for secondary school and the The Komera Project was founded. Today the organization supports 35 scholars, providing each with tuition and boarding costs, uniforms, health insurance, travel expenses, and the resources they will need to live comfortably and concentrate on their work.

Visit their website to learn about The Komera Project and how you can get involved.

Tomorrow we will feature ArtVenue and Design Museum Boston, two of our Founding 30 promoting arts and culture in Boston.

Find Your Cause: Sakhi

29 Aug

Meet Sakhi

logo

 Sakhi works to end violence against women by uniting survivors, communities, and institutions to eradicate domestic violence while simultaneously creating strong and healthy communities. The word ‘Sakhi’ is founded on the fundamental meaning of the word “woman friend”.  The organization began 21 years ago when a group of five South Asian women decided to fight against abuse and violence against women. They recognized that  there are many religious, cultural, and professional groups organized within the South Asian population in New York, however there were very few outlets that gave women a chance to speak up about domestic violence.  Sakhi is trying to change that.  By creating an infrastructure for a safe space, South Asian women can finally stand up against the violence they are facing or are seeing around them in their lives.

How Sakhi Does Good

Sakhi creates a positive change through a two pronged approach.

1. They create a safe place with a full range of culturally-sensitive , language-specific information, support, services, and advocacy for South Asian women facing abuse in their lives

2. They work to inform, actively engage, and mobilize the South Asian community in the movement to end violence against women forever

Sakhi believes that in order for families to be healthy and happy, violence and oppression must be eliminated at the heart and root of communities. Therefore, all members of the community must be aware of and willing to take steps to achieve a nonviolent atmosphere.  Sakhi helps to create this atmosphere by teaching others these steps, including: taking charge, getting involved and staying involved, hosting gatherings for solidarity and supporting the cause through donations. These resources and forums will give people the tools to lead a better life.  The organization also provides a helpline that can be accessed during weekday hours for further assistance.

Sakhi follows the philosophy that women need and deserve friendship and support in whatever choices they make, at every step of their journeys toward happier, healthier lives, free from abuse. They are there for women from the first call they make – when they might be unsure of what domestic violence is – to when they are ready to make new friends, start new lives, pursue education or career opportunities, and when they join the fight to end violence against women forever.

The latest exciting development for Sakhi is their upcoming conference for social justice leaders – “Preventing Violence, Promoting Justice”.  This game-changing conference, which is the first event of its type for Sakhi, will be held October 10th and 11th.  The goal of this convening is to build a stronger movement to end violence against women in the US by forging connections between related movements for social justice.

Sakhi’s Impact

Sakhi has transformed the lives of both individuals and communities.  Here are the highlights of just a few of their achievements:

  • Mobilized the landmark New York State Office of Court Administration court rule in October that obligates courts ensure an interpreter in all civil and criminal cases when a party is not proficient in English. They also produced a groundbreaking report on the first national survey of court interpreters.
  • Featured as experts in 48 presentations, including a panel hosted by Dan Rather titled, “Between Two Worlds: Domestic Violence, Immigration, and Human Rights” and four sessions at the National Network to End Domestic Violence Conference.
  • Scaled up survivor grants for economic empowerment by 50%, offering discretionary funding to alleviate barriers such as childcare and transportations costs.
  • Opened computer labs for and provided computer training to survivors via one-to-one assistance and group workshops.
  • Launched its Communities Take Charge campaign in Richmond Hill, Queens, with a mela, or street festival.  Over 750 community members attended and about 35 community-based organization participated.  Sakhi continues to form partnerships with the community-led organizations, faith-based institutions, and key leaders in Richmond Hill (To read more, please click here.)
  • Recruited a team of volunteers and interns who are so committed to the cause that they devoted 19 months worth of volunteer time towards ending violence against women.
  • Successfully responding to continually rising volumes of new requests for assistance through their Domestic Violence Program.

Perhaps the best indicator of Sakhi’s impact is a comment from an individual directly engaged with their work:

“My most valuable experience with Sakhi occurred a couple of years ago when I had the opportunity to work with a domestic violence survivor. She insists that I changed her life, but I know that her influence on me was far greater. The survivor and I spoke daily and I watched her grow from a distraught young person to an empowered woman who ultimately took charge of her life and turned it around. When I feel down or overwhelmed, I recall the strength and courage that this 20-year-old displayed, and tell myself if that if she can make it, everyone can… I realized how much Sakhi has impacted my identity. Its influence has been constant and far-reaching.” Sakhi volunteer

Catchafire’s Pro Bono Impact With Sakhi

Sakhi is new to Catchafire and will soon be seeking their first pro bono professionals! Stay tuned for how you can get involved!

Get Involved:

Please favorite the Sakhi page on Catchafire. (You need to be logged in to do this.) We’ll alert you as new opportunities to get involved become available.  If you want to learn more about this great opportunity, email community@catchafire.org.

Find Your Cause: Athena Collaborative Group

15 Aug

Meet Athena Collaborative Group

The mission of Athena Collaborative Group (ACG) is to expand the population of women entering and thriving in quantitative roles at all levels in competitive industries like investment banking. ACG works to support college women looking to explore and enter the industry. They accomplish this through raising awareness, skill building, mentoring and helping to place students in internships at top investment banks. Athena Collaborative Group believes that women are an untapped resource for careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Their goal is to support and empower women to realize their full potential, and in the process, create a new future for women in competitive industries.

How Athena Collaborative Group Does Good

Athena Collaborative group has four main programs:

  • Pathways to STEM - Empowering K-12 Girls for Math and Science Careers: The main goal of this program is to ensure that girls stay engaged in math and science education so that they can choose from a full range of high paying careers. Students, parents, teachers, individuals in relevant Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) roles, media and local government members are all invited to participate in a Community Action Summit in a given town. This diverse group discusses the low numbers of women pursuing quantitative careers and identifies some of the root causes driving these trends. They then identify opportunities and develop local solutions, create partnerships among stakeholders to increase accountability, and implement action plans to transform the opportunities for future generations of young women.
  • Internship Programs for Women in Investment Banking and Information Technology: These highly selective internship programs are designed to recruit, mentor and develop female college students to become leaders in Investment Banking (in Sales, Trading, Research, Asset Management, or Investment Banking) and IT (as Business Analysts, Application Developers, or Production Manager Analysts).
  • The Women’s Interbank Forum: This forum promotes dialogue among a cross-section of securities industry firms to create leverage and accelerate change for women in the industry. Through the Gender Equity Index and roundtable conversations, partcipants address firms’ talent recruitment, development and retention challenges, identify strategic and pragmatic solutions to address issues, promote relationships and share resources and best practices.

 

Athena Collaborative Group’s Impact

Since launching, ACG has worked to place more than 70 women in investment banking internships. Through participation in ACG’s Internship Program for Women in Investment Banking, students from universities such as Barnard, Columbia, Cooper Union, Harvard, NYU, Rutgers, Princeton and Vassar all secured internships at top Wall Street firms.

ACG has also piloted the first Community Action Summit on Preparing K-12 Girls for Math and Science Careers in Montclair, NJ and will sponsor “March Mathness,” a community-wide celebration of math in March 2012. In the past 12 months ACG facilitated the Women’s Interbank Forum to develop the Gender Equity Index, which was launched at a BNP Paribas hosted session in June. In 2011 ACG joined forces with Deutsche Bank, a leading global investment bank, to launch its Internship Program for Women in IT and is currently expanding its reach to recruit students from top universities across the US for this program.

Catchafire’s Pro Bono Impact with Athena Collaborative Group

Athena Collaborative Group has worked with two pro bono professionals to date, on a Social Media Plan, and a Storytelling Project. For an organization interacting with college age women, a social media plan was essential for them to understand how to reach more people in their target demographic and to keep current members engaged in an interactive way. (Pictured here at left is Catchafire volunteer Judi Huck, who designed ACG’s social media strategy and new facebook fan page, at an Athena recepetion.) The Storytelling Project supports ACG’s need to increase awareness of the organization in a compelling way and will be featured on Athena’s new website.

Get Involved

If you want to get involved, please favorite  Athena Collaborative Group  on Catchafire. (You need to be logged in to do this.) We’ll alert you as new opportunities to get involved become available. If you want to learn more about this great opportunity, email community@catchafire.org.

Find Your Cause: Prosperity Candle

22 Jun

Meet Prosperity Candle

Prosperity Candle is a social enterprise that unleashes the potential of women to catalyze economic growth, peace and prosperity in distressed regions. By connecting caring consumers to beautiful products that empower women as entrepreneurs, we are working to share the light and change lives.

Prosperity Candle’s mission is to partner with thousands of women who are rebuilding their lives with determination, by providing them with the opportunity, tools, and resources to start a successful business. Through their simple model of Shared Prosperity in which every entrepreneur can receive profit-sharing, each woman has the opportunity to earn well above a living wage, build her own enterprise, and provide employment and leadership in her community. Prosperity Candle currently helps women in Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, and women refugees in Massachusetts who have come from Burma and Bhutan.

How Prosperity Candle Does Good

Between March 2009 and June 2010, Prosperity Candle completed a pilot project in Iraq to field-test custom candle kits, and make sure the model would be both successful and sustainable. Prosperity Candle teamed up with Women for Women International to teach 4 Iraqi women in Baghdad how to make candles using the Prosperity Candle equipment and guide. These first “chandler-entrepreneurs” field-tested the kits and then trained 50 more women entrepreneurs.Throughout training workshops and practice at home, these women dedicated themselves to learning the art of candle-making, and acquired the skills to make high quality candles for local and export markets. In April 2010, the first Prosperity Candles were shipped to the U.S. to coincide with a Mother’s Day sales campaign, which offered beautiful, high quality pillar candles handmade by mothers and daughters of Iraq. Mothers throughout the world were thrilled to receive these thoughtful gifts.

Prosperity Candle’s Impact

To date, over 4,000 candles have been sold, and over 40 women in a place of conflict have been given the opportunity to start their own businesses. All will be able to earn an income that is above the minimum wage in Iraq, and some of the most skilled candle-makers have the opportunity to earn twice that amount (close to the average wage in Iraq) simply by investing in more candle molds. One woman, Nazahat, has already earns the equivalent of 3.5 times the minimum wage in Baghdad with her kitchen-based business.

Additionally, Prosperity Candle deeply believes that investing in women as business leaders creates the foundation for a peaceful and prosperous society. Women-owned enterprises play a central role as an untapped source of employment, economic growth, and social stability, especially in places where women are left to rebuild their lives and support families in the shadows of conflict and the aftermath of disaster. When a woman thrives, an entire community thrives.

Catchafire’s Pro Bono Impact with Prosperity Candle

Prosperity Candle has been matched with five Catchafire professionals, who have have worked on branding, public relations, social media, as well as market analysis. Having just completed their pilot program this past spring, things are very busy at Prosperity Candle, and a small staff must manage a large amount of work. Founding Partner Siiri Morley initially approached Catchafire, to find someone to help utilize social media to support the business and create a stronger sense of community among Prosperity Candle’s supporters.  Jackie Bivins, a marketing professional with many years of social media experience, was able to jump right in, offering advice not just on social media but on overall messaging. Prosperity Candle then sought the help of another professional to plan and launch their “4,000 Candles for Mother’s Day” campaign, which utilized Facebook and Twitter to create a grassroots sales strategy. The sales from this initial push then offered valuable data for a market analysis which the organization has been working on with another Catchafire professional, to help determine where to focus future marketing efforts. Working with Prosperity Candle, each of these professionals has helped support the organization’s mission, which in turn has translated to better lives for the women entrepreneurs working with Prosperity Candle throughout the world.

Get Involved

Prosperity Candle is currently looking for professionals to create a Motion Graphics Video and develop an Online Marketing Plan. If these are not your skills, visit the Prosperity Candle page on Catchafire and add the organization to your favorites. (This is only possible to do if you’re logged in) We will then send you updates and matches as they become available!  If you’d like to learn more about the project or organization, please email: community@catchafire.org.

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