Some of my favorite beads are from a several organizations that are really working to promote fair trade and helping communities become sustainable

The Karen Hill Tribe makes some incredible fine quality silver beads. The silver they use is 95-98% pure (vs 92.5% for sterling)

Here's a story about how your purchases of Karen Hill Tribe Silver are making a difference, and some other sites you might find interesting. http://www.firemountaingems.com//Hilltribe

http://www.handclasp.org/Welcome.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people

Another favorite style of beads are the Kazuri Beads and the Happy Beads...hand-made clay beads and lampwork beads in all colors possible. Here's their stories

The Kazuri Story

Kazuri Founder - Lady Susan Wood
Lady Wood was born (1918) in a mud hut in an African village. Her parents were missionaries from England in the Ituri Forest. Lady Wood was sent back to England to be educated and married Michael Wood, a surgeon. They came to Kenya in 1947. They were dedicated to making a difference and Lady Wood started a coffee plantation on the Karen Blixen estate, famous from the award winning movie "Out of Africa" , at the foot of the Ngon'g Hills, about 30 minutes from the bustling Nairobi city center in Kenya. Lady Wood was a visionary, an unsung hero of her time. She assisted her husband in founding the East African Flying Doctor Service, which expanded into the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) of which Michael Wood was Director General for 29 years. Michael Wood was knighted in 1985.

The beginnings of Kazuri Beads

In 1975, Lady Susan Wood set up a fledging business making beads in a small shed in her back garden. She started by hiring two disadvantaged women, and quickly realized that there were many more women who were in need of jobs and so Kazuri Beads was created and began its long and successful journey as a help center for the needy women especially single mothers who had no other source of income. In 1988 Kazuri became a factory and expanded hugely with over 120 women and men. Here women are trained and apply their skills to produce these unique and beautiful beads and jewelry. The beads are made with clay from the Mt Kenya area thus giving them authenticity to their craft. The factory acts as a social gathering with the hum of voices continuing throughout the day. With unemployment so high, one jobholder often ends up providing for an "extended family" of 20 or more. Kazuri is a member of the Fair Trade Act

Kazuri Beads Today

Today Kazuri, the Swahili word for 'small and beautiful' produces a wide range of hand made, hand painted ceramic jewelry that shines with a kaleidoscope of African colors and Kenyan art that reflects a culture and appeal to a worldwide fashion market. Kazuri's beautifully finished products are made to an international standard and are sold worldwide. These standards are maintained through high training standards and a highly motivated management team.

In 2001 Mark and Regina Newman bought the company and their goal is to further increase the size of the company and to maintain the guiding philosophy ... to provide employment opportunities for disadvantaged members of Kenyan Society.

HAPPY BEADS

I met Dare at the Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee. She was my first introduction to these wonderfully happy beads. In fact I bought a bunch the first day, and had to return on Sunday after I'd looked over what I bought and realized I had enough for necklaces, but forgot about earrings. That return trip was the beginning of Carolyn Creation....I bought so much from her and others that I HAD to start a business.

Dare is a wonderfully delightful woman. You can't help but smile when you're around her.

DARe'S STORY One time, in 2003, when I was just starting my bead business, I heard the song "Some Enchanted EVENING" (from the play/movie "South Pacific"). I thought they could have been saying "Some Enchanted BEADING". So, just before I exhibited at my first bead show, I chose that name for my business. My first bead show as a vendor was also my first bead show as a customer. I didn't wait until I was "ready" - good thing I didn't wait as I am still getting ready. - About Dare A story about Dare Van Vree and her metamorphisis into Hunadi Malapane... Dare Van Vree became a Peace Corps volunteer in 1999 when she was sixty-eight years old and was assigned to a rural area in South Africa. When she left the Peace Corps, she returned several times from America to that area to continue helping the children with whom she had become friends. She prefers not to call them "street kids" as they all had homes although the homes may have been nothing more than a culvert or a box or a "home" where neglect and abuse prevailed. She was influential in providing a shelter that was managed by volunteer tribal women of the community. She fed the children and clothed them until the government was able to do so. She acquired chickens (through Heifer International) for the women who managed the shelter. She provided financial assistance and emotional support for eight gifted teen-age boys. She shipped, at her own expense, over 1500 pounds of saleable donated clothes to benefit projects of the communities. She provided drinking water for a school with 1,500 children (and only ten teachers) who had been without water since the school opened five years earlier. Without water, lunch could not be cooked and without water, mud from the heavy seasonal rains could not be cleared away and without water, droppings from the grazing goats remained underfoot. The school was without electricity and a hand pump was installed. Two months later it was stolen. Her "in-kind" support was provided by the local agency of the Labor Department. She worked with a government sponsored craft program for eighty-four women. She rented sales space at a local flea market and hired women to sell the donated clothes, the proceeds from which were to support programs of the local schools and communities. The chief of the tribal village, Koshi Malapane, bestowed his sir name on her in acknowledgment of her contributions. A tribal instructor at the Language Training program of the Peace Corps, in a group re-naming of each Peace Corps volunteer, selected the most honorable "praise" name of "Hunadi" - an earned name that cannot be given at birth.

Hunadi Malapane was born in 2000! HER MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES occurred on Sunday afternoons when all eight boys piled into her second-hand car and traveled the countryside. Some of the boys had never been out of their village, had never ridden in a car, had never been to a city or eaten in a restaurant. Her most meaningful experience was helping one of the boys who was jailed for forcible entry into a neighbor's home (armed with a knife) and stealing a bicycle. He was placed in an adult prison in solitary confinement and was lost in the system. She stood in the witness box with him at his hearing, visited him with food, clean clothes and toys during his two week detention. When the trial occurred, the defense team was not prepared and the boy was sentenced to another two weeks detention in the same jail under the same conditions. She intervened by visiting the defense team, the prosecuting attorney and the judge pleading that he be removed from that prison and assigned to a proper place of incarceration. The defense team failed to prove a point and the boy was released two days later. After her truncated tour with the Peace Corps in Africa, in the autumn of 2000, she was an invited speaker at various clubs and organizations in the Adirondack region of northern New York state, the location of her home town at that time. She described conditions & attitudes in post-apartheid South Africa and outlined her intentions to accomplish her projects upon her return to Africa. As a result of these speaking engagements, she received financial contributions from Kiwanis, Rotary Club, numerous churches, the minimum security prison at Altoona, student groups at a college and high schools, numerous senior citizen groups, women's social clubs and a multitude of friends and individuals who just wanted to share in making a difference. Her projects were also financed by purchasing arts and crafts made in rural African villages and selling them in her seasonal shop (and home) in Essex, NY .

The biggest financial gain, however, came from the sale of her home - an early Victorian ten room house built in 1822. And that is how she was able to finance the introduction of Kazuri loose beads to the American market. - About Togo Say "Hi" to Togo when you see him at the show. (He has declined to be interviewed.) - Kenya Beads The introduction of loose beads from Kenya to America! During her frequent trips to Africa to continue her projects with the "street kids" and other groups, Dare ventured to Kenya and purchased beaded necklaces. She sold what she could in her seasonal shop in the Adirondack region of northern New York state and separated the other necklaces into loose beads. This was the beginning of her bead business. On the next trip to Kenya, she bought more necklaces and continued the process. On the next trip, although she intended to buy more necklaces, instead, she bought just the loose beads.

So, in the fall of 2003, she made the scary commitment to sell loose beads at The Whole Bead show in Tucson in February 2004. The scare was derived from the fact that, at this time, she had NO BEADS. Selecting her own color combinations and using some of her own designs, she ordered, sight unseen, enough beads to fill a room. She had to make sure each of the twelve colors/designs (that's how many compartments are in her display boxes) corresponded with each other. Fifteen more sets of twelve colors/designs would fill the tables. At least fifty beads of each colors/designs meant an order of over ten thousand beads for delivery to Tucson by the end of January, 2004. And there was no guarantee these beads would end up being good sellers. Despite the Christmas vacation for the bead makers, delays at customs offices and snow storms in Texas the beads arrived in Tucson the very day before the room was available for set-up. How neat was that? Thank you to each and every one of you bead shop owners, jewelry designers and home hobbyists who made that show and all my subsequent shows all over America successful.

I remember seeing many of you at that first show in Tucson - you have become some of my dear friends. My other shows west of the Mississippi: Sacramento, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Milwaukee have resulted in many more good friendships. I met lots of wonderful people (who also have become my very good friends) at shows in Hartford, Providence, Marlborough, New York, White Plains, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, York, Newark, Wilmington, Baltimore, Richmond, Columbus, Akron, Atlanta, Memphis, Asheville, Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Charleston, St Augustine, Jacksonville, Tampa and any other place that may have slipped my mind. Now, these baeds are sold all over the world.

Think of the progress in the sale of these beads in just four years to agents in Canada, UK, Denmark, Australia, Netherlands, Spain, France, Dubai, Japan, Germany and, of course, Africa. Nice going! - About Happy Beads How did "HAPPY BEADS" find their way from a piece of clay to your jewelry box or bead box or store as the case may be?

Here's part of a lovely letter I received from the gentleman who subsequently became the other agent for loose beads in America. He began selling Kazuri necklaces in the mid-90's and, then, in 2004 started selling loose beads as well: "Dear Dare, First of all let me thank you for the huge contribution you have made in introducing ------ beads to the US market. Single handedly, you have caused a chain reaction that has put hundreds of thousands of beads on the market, helped spread the word ------ as well as benefited the over 200 women now employed in Kenya. Again, thank you." (October 2006) Thanks!

I appreciate your kind and encouraging words. There are well over two hundred paid employees, plenty of new markets and a fulfillment of a dream to help as many women as feasible. Fifty women were on the payroll in 2002, and now look! --there are almost three hundred and there will be more at the rate the markets all over the world are recognizing the quality and beauty of these beads. Almost three hundred women are now employed. Now it is time for me to move on. Now it is time to start a project that will recognize and help children of the world. That project is called "Happy Beads" and through "The Smile Train" we support children all over the world who were born with cleft palates.

"The Smile Train" is an organization founded in America in 1999 by a group of surgeons to treat children all over the world who have cleft palates. Some of the clefts are so severe that food cannot be swallowed. Children who have clefts are rejected by society and live a life of isolation and malnutrition. The seriousness of their conditions has had little or no recognition throughout the world until this group was organized. One hundred percent of donations goes directly to the children's surgeries. Administrators are paid from an endowment fund created by the founders. Physicians from America donate their time in traveling to these countries to train local doctors. They operate in 71 countries around the world and so far over 200,000 children have received this restorative surgery. Some Enchanted Beading donated enough money in 2007 so that ten children received this corrective surgery. Their lives are changed forever and the new smiles of these children are proof that anyone can make a difference in the lives of others.

We can't save the whole world, but, we can change the life of one. If anyone cares to donate, the address is The Smile Train 245 Fifth Ave Suite 2001 New York, NY 10016