Want to know a no-fail technique to a Happy Monday morning?
Read an inspiring story about a woman achieving her goals. Even better, how about goals that have been achieved because you helped support!
That is just what we did today, as we read about Gladies, one of our partners in Uganda, and how purchases of her Fair Trade jewelry are helping her make her dreams a reality.
Gladies has been been working with Ember Arts for the last five years. She is affectionately refered to as ‘Special Teams’ because she’s smart, dependable, and can get just about anything done. Recently she made a big step towards her dreams by starting her own small business.
Gladies fled from her family home in Amuru, an area in northern Uganda, about a decade ago during the civil war. When she first arrived in the Acholi Quarters community of Uganda’s capital city it was only a collection of mud huts around a stone quarry, where men, women, and children could do hard labor for about $1 per day. That’s what Gladies did to pull her family through.
And now Gladies is using her earnings from Ember Arts to expand her earning potential, too.
These days Acholi Quarters is looking a lot better, and so is Gladies’ family. She has three children, and she’s paying for all of them to attend good local schools, an expensive feat in Uganda’s capital.
And now Gladies is using her earnings from Ember Arts to expand her earning potential, too. She recently traveled back to Amuru and bought a rice milling machine, and rented a place in a big trading center to collect, mill, and sell rice. Farmers come for miles around to sell their harvest to her.
She partnered with her brother in the business, so now his family is benefiting, too. And they have big plans for the future.
Gladies and her brother plan to put up their own commercial building in the trading center, a place where they can process and store not just rice, but other crops, too. Building, she says, will start in December.
Like most of our partners in Uganda, Gladies wants to eventually move back to her family home. With the money she’s earned and skills she’s learned as an Ember partner, she’s well on her way to accomplishing that dream.
We are so excited to support Gladies, and the 27 other women in her artisan group! Stop by the store and see their beautiful jewelry today!
Content and Photos provided by Ember Arts
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