Empower Women Worldwide

BodyArtJewels.com is dedicated to empowering women and their communities worldwide. How? By: • Empowering the women who wear Body Art Jewels; helping them feel confident, strong, and beautiful • Supporting cottage industry • Educating people about organizations that enable women to become powerful by helping them to help themselves • Contributing a percentage of our profits to these organizations Helping women to help themselves is the most powerful gift you can give. 1.5 billion people live in poverty today. 75% of them are women. Denied credit, education and healthcare, these women are caught in a downward cycle. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of poverty in the world. Yet it is also getting easier to lend a hand that can lift people out of poverty permanently. Organizations like the Heifer Foundation, Plan USA/Child Reach, Care and Unitus all assist people in ways that empower the individual and their communities. At the Heifer Foundation, you can give income producing livestock to a family in need, everything from bees to water buffalo. Heifer trains them to care for the animal(s) and the first female offspring born is given to a neighbor in need, thus "passing on the gift." One of their more famous stories is about Beatrice Biira from the village of Kisinga, Africa. Her family was too poor to send her to the local school. Thanks to the goat they received from the Heifer Foundation, they earned enough to send her to school. Once in school, she earned scholarships. One scholarship lead to another, and Beatrice ended up going to Connecticut College! She then returned to her village to help improve the local school. All this from one goat! Organizations like Unitus and Care have brought banking to the world's poorest people. With small loans, called microfinancing, they have enabled thousands to work their way out of poverty and starvation. These organizations discovered that women make use of their loans and increased profit in a way that benefits their whole family. They also paid back the loan with interest, on time, with a 95% success rate! One of Unitus's founding members tells a powerful story of a woman who asked for a $35 loan. Stunned by how little she was asking for, he inquired how she planned to use the money. She explained that she sold goat's milk and that pasteurized goat's milk sold for three times as much as unpasteurized. The $35 would enable her to buy a thermometer needed to pasteurize the milk. Two weeks later, she repaid her loan! With her increased profits she was able to purchase the uniform, books and school transportation needed to send her son to school. With a $35 loan she broke the cycle! Microfinancing is a real, active way to empower women. Plan USA/Child Reach also has many other wonderful ongoing programs, ranging from stopping child slavery, educating women on how to escape the traps of enslaved prostitution, and, of course, enabling individuals to sponsor a child. Here are some suggestions of things you can do to empower: • Give livestock as gifts in the name of a friend or family member the next time you give a present. We, along with our closest friends, do this and it makes us feel great! • Sponsor a child as a gift to yourself on your next birthday • Make a donation toward microfinancing and it will continue to grow as the same money gets loaned over and over again • Click on the links in the list below to learn more about these empowering organizations and their many programs and projects • And of course, purchase Body Art Jewels and we will contribute a percentage of our profits, too! Care Heifer Foundation Plan USA/Child Reach Unitus