Love 146 Craft Sale… now through Christmas!

The Love 146 Craft Sale will begin Sunday, November 29, and continue every week through December 20.  Crafty items such as handknitted and handcrocheted scarves, handmade Christmas ornaments, jewelry and much much more will be available for purchase.  Many items will be donated from our very own craft life group!

Make sure you take a look– you may find the perfect Christmas gift for someone special in your life!

All proceeds to benefit Love 146.

If you would like to donate your crafty creations for sale, please speak to Jenni Weese or email her at jweese77@hotmail.com.

Happy crafting and happy shopping!

Shop Tuesdays: Darfur Basket of Strength

Every Tuesday we feature a product or company that sells for a good cause.

The Amber Chand Gift Collection sells these beautiful and functional baskets that will not only connect you to a region that needs your voice, but one woman– the weaver– who pulled these fibers together in a refugee camp in Western Darfur.

An excerpt of their story:

The sprawling Kalma and Kassab camps are home to an estimated 150,000 refugees. Here, amidst the makeshift structures built from adobe brick and plastic sheeting you will find women’s weaving centers where about fifty women gather together to share their personal stories, exchange information and weave these colorful traditional baskets as part of their healing.

All have hastily fled from their burning villages with their families, leaving behind all of their possessions. Many have lived at the camp for almost four years with few dreams of returning home and rebuilding their lives.

By responding to the demand for these baskets from customers in the United States, the women now have an opportunity to earn a steady and dignified livelihood – what we call a “prosperity wage”, earning 30% more than they would weaving these baskets for the local markets. They feel valued, appreciated and visible!

Watch this 90-second video to learn more.

Inspiration file: Project H Design

Meet Emily Pilloton, age 27, who took her product design education and decided to make things that mattered.  She founded Project H Design in January 2008 and has been involved with dozens of projects tackling social and environmental problems. They range from developing water transportation devices for use in Africa, to helping homeless people in San Francisco design things to sell, and repairing school furniture in rural Mexico.

Ms. Pilloton is featured in a recent New York Times article.  Here’s an excerpt:

One project, the Learning Landscape, began when Ms. Pilloton visited a Ugandan school for orphans who had lost their parents to AIDS. “The kids had very specific emotional needs and needed more engaged ways to learn, but there weren’t any good teaching materials,” she recalled. Project H’s New York chapter formed a design team to research the problem and devise a solution: a grid of 16 or 20 recycled car tires half-buried in the ground. “It’s an incredibly dumb construction method,” Ms. Pilloton said. “But it’s cheap — we just built one in the Dominican Republic for $75 — and very effective. We developed games for kids to play in the grid that use movement, competition and connectivity to help them learn anything from kindergarten math to eighth-grade algebra.”

This fascinating and powerful video tell her story and the story of Project H Design.

If you’d like to know more, visit her very cool website here.  You can also read her books: here and forthcoming here!