Day 8 of Giving that Gives Back: Meet Mercy Goods

Mercy Goods

Good That Transforms

From early on in our time working as St.Bryce Missions here in Costa Rica, one of the things God began to build a passion and a vision for was job creation, skills training and meaningful work in our area. The area in we live and minister is one of the most rural regions of Costa Rica. It also has one of the lowest rate of family income in the country. For women, access to work outside the domestic arena is limited. If it is available, it is often located an hour or more away in the city. For single moms or moms with young children, it is nearly impossible to work in the city without having to pay for additional child care. And if a woman can't leave home to work for reasons such as being the primary care taker of an elderly or disables relative, her options for finding income for her family are non-existent.

After much prayer, conversation, and research, we began an outreach providing skills training and meaningful work opportunities to women in our area. We are in the process of rebranding and designing our shop right now, but the title above is the name of our social enterprise: Mercy Goods. If you click under my archives tab on "meaningful work", you can follow along much for the process as I brainstormed my way through to getting the enterprise off the ground. 

Our ladies produce hand made quilts and other items from reclaimed clothing that we source locally. We reduce our consumer footprint by turning bags of clothes that were headed to the landfill into usable, sellable craft items. We create a cycle of giving that gives back by first contracting our ladies to make quilts for a current partner that we choose to "cover in mercy". Sponsors donate the price of the quilt and the ladies are then paid to produce them. We at St. Bryce Missions deliver them to the partner. We have to date covered our local orphanage, the first licensed safe house for trafficking victims here in Costa Rica, and the Gleason House for ALS patients in our Mercy Covers quilts.

Tomorrow, we will open  the opportunity to contract our artists to create a waterproof quilt for the homeless this Christmas. Our goal will be to cover the local homeless community in the nearby city of Turrialba in mercy, as well as the community being served by our friends in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. This will mean contracting a total of 70 quilts. I do hope you will come back tomorrow and give this special gift that gives back three-fold: to the recipient of the quilt, to the artist and her family who are employed and empowered by your donation, and to you the donor who does to do good that transforms.

In addition to the quilts. we then give our artists the opportunity to take ownership over the materials and skills we provide them and create other items for sale. While we are waiting for our shop front to be ready, you can view the items available to purchase on our Facebook page. So today, would you stop and take a look around? Perhaps find an item or two you might like? And share this post or the page with your social media connections?

Building this kind of enterprise is way more challenging than I ever expected and much slower going than I thought it would be. Your help and encouragement keeps me and our artists pushing forward through the obstacles seeking to transform lives and families and communities. We truly appreciate that more than you will ever know.

P.S. I had all these great photos to add to this post. But blogger is all, "Hey, Lady, day of rest. Get it?" Bu they are all on our Facebook albums, so that just means you HAVE to head over and click around, right?

All posts in this series can be found linked here.

As the Frenzy Ensues

As the frenzy of Christmas shopping and preparations ensues, I wanted to take the time to remind all of you about the responsible shopping links in this post. I have put it as a page right up there at the top of the blog so you can find it easily, and I have been editting and adding links to new businesses I have discovered since the original post.
Please share your favorite links in the comments section as well. And consider adding items from one of these sites to your shopping list this Christmas. You can give a gift, send a message, spread the word all at once. Plus, it's a much less frantic way to shop!
So make some hot chocolate or a peppermint mocha latte and click around. I know you'll be both satisfied and inspired.
And we can continue to our fight and live our commitment to take action against trafficking in the midst of the holiday rush when we often have such good intentions but quickly lose focus.

Let's Shop Responsibly

With the season of giving fast approaching, one way we can act to end all kinds of injustices and support the efforts of those working on behalf of the poor and oppressed world wide is to shop responsibly and make as many of our holiday purchases from stores that sell fair trade products or products produced and sold directly by organizations working with the artisans. Another aspect is to support organizations who use the sales of their products to change lives by providing good for orphans, clean water in Africa, or other vital needs.

Another thought, maybe more radical, is to give instead of get this Christmas. What if a family decided to half what they spent of gifts this Christmas and spend the weeks leading up to the birth of Christ giving to others like my my beautiful friend Ann does. I'll admit, I'm struggling with Christmas this year. I'm taking my missionary kids home for the first time in a year this Christmas (God willing, we just got some rough news from our supporter about this. Pray with me that we can accept God's will in grace?). I want it to be meaningful for them and yet mindful of others. They have some real needs that could be met with gifts. But I also want to them to think of giving as the way to real Christmas joy. Being a missionary isn't a free pass to that joy. Sometimes it's easy to justify indulging these darling missionaries because they give up so much already. I want to be more intentional than that in our time at home.

If you are feeling called to shop more responsibly this season, there are some great internet sites that have made that so much easier. I have done what I can to get a list going here. If you have others to suggest, please leave them in the comments below.

Gift Selections:

• Shop to Stop Slavery's Ethical Shopping Guide: A great resources for finding conscientious companies and a variety of gift ideas for every budget. And all the research is done for you. 
• Charity Gift Market: This might be my favorite resource in the list. Shop by product, name of charity or cause you want to support. And the gifts are beautiful.
• Edited to add the Connected in Hope shop co-founded by Catholic homeschooling mom Ryane to provide meaningful work for former fuel wood carriers.
• The Open Arms Shop: Providing meaningful work for women refugees in the Austin, TX area. And the skirts and scarves are so pretty!
• The Amazima Store: Necklaces made by women in the Masese community ministered to by Katie Davis. I'm giving these to my favorite ladies this year! And I might sneak a red one into my own stocking!
• Radiant Cosmetics: Lipstick and eye shadow that fight trafficking! A micro-enterprise cosmetics company.
• 3 Cords: A social enterprise for Haitian women who lost limbs in that country's tragic earthquake. Really cute bags, head bands and accessories. 
• Haitian Crosses: Beautiful products, including some lovely Nativity triptychs, from a Haitian artisans cooperative supported my various Catholic ministries within the Diocese of Miami. 
• Give Jewelry Bracelets: What a lovely gift for the girls in our lives. Beautiful jewelry that provides a fair wage for the artisan and feeds an Indonesian orphan for a week. 
• Ten Thousand Villages: unique, handmade fair trade items in a variety of categories. Someone in our  family wants a djembe drum for Christmas. I think I've found it.
• The Hunger Site Store: Huge selection of items and your pruchase helps feed the hungry around the world.
• Mudlove Bracelets: These bracelets with inspirational words look super cool and are a great gift for teens in your life. Each $5 band provides one person in Africa clean drinking water for a year.
• Trade As One: I picked this one because there are a lot of lovely food choices for gift baskets, including coffee, tea and chocolate.
• SERVV: This one is a pioneer in fair trade products and creating entrepeneurship in developing nations. I'm slightly obessed with this bag. And the aprons. And the table linens. Well, you get the idea. Good stuff there.
• Shop Etsy: This is not a charity organization, but you can find all kinds of great gift ideas in Etsy and, for the most part, be assured you are supporting a home-based small business enterprise or at least avoiding the mass-produced consumer market. 
• Shop the sponsors at your favorite blogs. Again, no guarantee that you are fighting slavery or poverty with your purchase, but they are likely to be family-run businesses who really appreciate support. I know Elizabeth's sponsor list is chock full of great Catholic and Christian businesses.

Chocolate:

If you are not sure why it is important to look for socially conscience chocolate, take a look a this documentary to understand. Much of the chocolate sold by large producers is made by child slaves on the Ivory Coast of Africa. I wish I could say I had always understood and felt moved by this unconscionable fact, but I haven't. However, I now think it is one of the most important consumer decisions we can make.

• This page offers a great comprehensive list of brands, facts, and links of where to purchase chocolate in good conscience. 
• And this Costa Rican company is a great option for quality organic chocolate produced in a sustainable fair trade fashion. And it's priced quite reasonably. And, as you know, I'm partial to businesses that provide meaningful fair trade work in the indigenous regions of Costa Rica.

If you are looking for some alternatives to consumerism and would like to allocate part of your holiday budget to giving rather than receiving, here are some ideas that I am passionate about. Of course, there are countless others and I would encourage you to follow where your heart leads. The Spirit gives the gift of zeal. We all experience it differently. Use what He gives.

Alternatives to gift giving:

• Help us get the Mercy Covers reach its funding goal on Pure Charity.
• Or choose another St. Bryce Foundation project to help with.
• Help Salvando Corazones make their Christmas dream a reality by making a donation to get them open and full by Christmas. 18 girls rescued from trafficking and exploitation. Now, that's a gift.
• Become a Christmas warrior for Reece's Rainbow and help an orphan find a family for Christmas.

This is not an exhaustive list and just researching and thinking it through this much has taken me days on end. It takes time and energy to think and shop this way, and sometimes, as I can attest, you just need to run to Target (or PriceSmart) and get the job done. I beg for grace to be an intentional consumer if the times when I must simply purchase or consume for the sake of our collective family sanity.

But I am totally inspired by these links I have shared and I do hope that at least one of these links will inspire you and allow you to make a purchase or a donation that will serve your needs in a way that is good for your moral spirit. Please share your favorite links for conscientious shopping in the comments.

Providing Meaningful Work: What We Need to Get Started

I have been working hard to put all the details together to get the Blessed Zelie Martin Initiative I outlined here up and running in all its aspects. Or at least to know what I need to do to get to accomplish that.

I am ready to begin on the first aspect of the initiative by teaching English classes for women here in town. This I can start right away because materials and funds for the initial investment are not necessary and I can arrange to use a free facility. The U.S. Embassy provides free materials for teaching from the Peace Corps on their web site and since I am going to aim mostly for conversational English, I do not need a lot of materials to begin with.

The initial project for the second aspect of the initiative, micro-business loans, will be to help a young woman furnish the beauty salon she is building in front of her home. A women's group in Indiana is hoping to adopt this project and raise the funds to purchase her salon chair for the shop. Additional funds will be necessary for other needs to finish this project. If your women's group, bible study, or other group might like to help, please let me know by hosting a fundraiser, please let me know.

Missionary Rosary Design

The third and fourth aspects of the initiative are where we will need help getting going. The base projects for the women's craft cooperative will missionary rosaries and bracelets. In the mission rosary, each decade is a different color and represents a different continent for which you pray.  I cannot find any other vendor selling stone or gem versions of the rosary, only plastic. I think this will make a nice cornerstone product for the group, and learning the skill of stringing and beading rosaries can be transferred to jewelry making and other opportunities for the women. I would like to also create a bracelet version of the product with the various colored beads representing the continents and a cross dangle for Christians of other denominations who might want to join in prayers for the mission but do not necessarily pray the rosary. I am figuring start up supplies to create the first fifty rosaries and bracelets to estimate about $1000. Once these items are produced and we are able to begin sales, the cooperative should become self-funding, however, further donations of sales and materials will increase the amount of income for the cooperative members.

T-shirt Product Idea: Bracelet from U Create

Other products from the cooperative would focus on items that are both marketable here locally and internationally that we can produce from recycled t-shirts . I have gathered a numbered of project ideas on Pinterest and many of them do not require sewing. Eventually, however, we will need to have the ability to sew items in order to create a variety of products. The nice things about using t-shirts is that bulk of the materials for this product line can be obtained for free. I will, though, be creating a wish list of items we would like donated second hand or purchased, so as sewing machines, needles, thread, scissors, pins etc... I know there are lots of people with unused materials laying around  so if we ask enough, I am confident we can supply this part of the group's needs without much initial investment.

I would like to make Bible Study and lunch together a part of the days when the cooperative meets, so another aspect of fundraising will be to purchase Spanish Bibles, journals and pens for the women in the group and have a small fund to drawer from to purchase food for lunch each at each meeting.

After that will come the marketing and shipping of items. For that we will need a well-designed web site (I am hoping we can find a talented individual willing to donate his/her time for this) and the funds to cover the cost of an e-box from Mail Boxes Etc. to make it more feasible to get supplies and products in and out.

In the last aspect of the initiative, the craft cooperative for indigenous women, I would like to focus on a skill many of the women already have, which is beading with small pony beads. I would like to offer them the opportunity to take home and bead the cotton pouches in which we will package our rosaries and other products and then return with them and receive payment.  Because I am still working part time as a technical writer, I will tithe part of my income to cover this aspect of the cooperative. Eventually, I think we could probably make the bags ourselves, but I will purchase the initial materials for packaging the first 50 rosaries and bracelets so that we can launch all aspects of the cooperative at the same time.

That leaves the last aspect, partnering with the work of Salvando Corazones. This aspect, to me, is one of the most important of the initiative as it gives the women here who are receiving the opportunity to share and pass on the hope. So we will share part of what we raise in donations as well as tithe part of what we make in sales with the women in Costa Rica's first trafficking safe house so that they are equal beneficiaries of what we receive.

So, there you have it. Overwhelmed by the details? Yes, I am. But reading the book Half the Sky (Have you read it? Tomorrow, I'll be inviting you to come back at the end of the month and discuss the book and/or the PBS documentary at the end of the month.) I am inspired and convicted that this is an important effort and one I cannot back away from because it is overwhelming. God has given me a pocket of space in my days to devote to this ministry and the Spirit has continued to inspire and motivate me, so I will keep moving toward making it work. And we shall what He does with my meager efforts.

So, what can you do? What I am looking for now are women who might already be gathering with other women in Bible Study, mother's groups, book clubs, homeschooling groups, and even running clubs or recipe clubs etc. or who might be willing to gather a group of women or even a school class or high school club and work with them to help the me and women here get this initiative off the ground by hosting a fundraiser for the initiative. The idea is simple, choose an event, spread the word, share the stories and get us moving. I will be back to share event ideas in another post as this the details of this post have probably already put anyone reading on overload.

But start thinking of a group you might be able to work with to host an event and let me know via comment or e-mail if you are might be willing to host an event.

Providing Meaningful Work: A Plan

I wrote here that providing meaningful work for women was one way I had long been thinking about fighting the exploitation and vulnerability of women. I have kicked around these ideas for a few months now and I have finally been able to clarify them into a plan with five aspects. Today I will lay out a bit of an outline of those aspects and then we can begin talking about the things I haven't yet figured out and the needs we have to meet to be able to accomplish this. I explained that I have chosen Blessed Zelie as the patron and so in our projects list, it will be called the Zelie Martin Initiative.

• Aspect 1: Educational Courses

                  It never takes long for people wherever we are living as missionaries to find out that I can teach English and come asking about classes. Sometimes, I get stuck on whether this is a good use of my time or not. But here in Costa Rica, I have discovered, if adults can pass exams in various subjects at various levels, their wages go up. So providing an English class for women is a very worthwhile endeavor. I have already begun talking to the school principal about the possibility of using a class room there. Later, I would like to be able to offer other kinds of classes, like some education in personal finances, health, and maybe literacy if there is a need.

• Aspect 2: Micro-business loans

               There is definitely no shortage of ideas or motivation to work here, especially among the women. And many women have skills well worth offering. Most often the problem is that they lack the necessary investment to get started. The first loan we would like to grant is for a friend who has been studying and building little by little for two years to have her own small beauty salon in front of her home. She has finished her studies and her husband has purchased the wood little by little and built the initial structure. Now she needs the funds to furnish it out with a salon chair, sink, mirror, and professional supplies. In terms of business investment, the amount needed is small, a few thousand dollars, but to her family, it is years worth of savings. Helping her get this project of the ground would grant stability to her family. We have other projects waiting after hers, a woman who would like to teach cake making classes, thus providing meaningful work for her and skill training for other women, a woman who would like to create a small shop in her home to help her daughters pay for college so they do not have to go to work in the city. The list is ongoing. Providing an opportunity for families to create business and income with their own skills or encouraging the acquisition of work skills lessens their vulnerability and the necessity to seek work that places them or their children in danger of being exploited.

• Aspect 3: Women's Artisan Cooperative

            The ability of women to produce beauty with their hands in universally appreciated. It is the same here. The second aspect of the plan is organize a women's cooperative. I would like to first focus on making natural stone versions of the missionary rosary and projects we can make from repurposed t-shirts. You can see some ideas I've started collecting on my Pinterest board. Once we get going on the communal projects, I would then like to invite the participating women to bring in other items they can make to sell or to teach a craft to the other women of the group. The marketing strategy would be to set up a web page to sell the items as well to set up a table monthly in a local farmer's market. We would meet on a Saturday and have Bible study in the morning, then work, break and share lunch together, and finish up in the afternoons. The women could then take various projects home to finish up if needed. However, I want to majority of the work to be accomplished in the communal work setting as I think this aspect is very important. Fellowship, sharing the word of God, breaking bread together and working together all contribute to a structure that lessens the idea feeling of loneliness and desperation among women, thus lessening their vulnerability to the dangerous forces that feed the trafficking machine.

• Aspect 4: Indigenous Women's Cooperative

             The specifics of this aspect of the project are the least clear at this point. It is not possible for many indigenous women to walk from the mountains to participate in the cooperative mentioned above, not to mention the fact that language and culture differences would make it difficult even if they should be able to attend. Of course, they will be invited always. But I would like to also offer an alternative form of participation to the women who must work at home because of distance. Many of the indigenous women are skilled at the craft of beading. I would like to purchase some canvas field bags and market bags and let them have license to decorate them as they like with beads. These can then be included in our marketing.

• Aspect 5: A Partnership

              I will be meeting soon with Maria at Salvando Corazones to flesh out how the St. Bryce Foundation can partner in the work they are doing to fight the injustice of human trafficking and provide the first safe house for victims in Costa Rica. But we would like to dedicate this program, the Zelie Martin Initiative, as a partner for their work. Meaning whatever we raise in funding for this program, we will share equally with them for their work and education programs that will provide a future full of hope for the residents of their safe house. So, if we have a sewing machine on our wish list, and a sponsor donates the item or the funds, we will not move on to the next need until we have donated an equal item or funds to Salvando Corazones.

So, there is the rough outline of the idea. I am ready to put in the work to get it going and keep it going. But I need a lot of help thinking through particulars and acquiring the necessary skills and supplies. That's where you can help. So, let's all keep praying, asking Blessed Zelie's intercession, and then perhaps we will be able to work through the details and create something meaningful and beautiful for the women and families of Costa Rica and for God.