A couple months back I wrote about the “true poverty line,” the income level below which transformational change is nearly impossible, and above which it becomes feasible.

I’ve renamed it the “Prosperity Line,” and we’re going to find out where it lies. At least for the women we work with. My friend Max and I have been working on a questionnaire to determine how much income one of our Uganda partners really needs in order to pursue her dreams. Dreams of educating her children, building a family home, starting a business, and more.

Not only will we keep you updated on our findings, we’re also going to post the questionnaire here when it’s completed, so other businesses and organizations can use it.

The poverty line is only step one. Here’s to chasing the Prosperity Line.

Last week I ran into my friend Tyler at a restaurant. He was there with one of his business mentors, a Ugandan real estate mogul by the name of Anatoli Kamugisha. Tyler introduced us and luckily for me Anatoli thought it appropriate to share one of his favorite quotes. It quickly became one of my favorites.

Download this photo of Mama Esther (click thru for the big version) and add one of your favorite quotes. Share it with us on facebook.

Check out these photos from baptisms, trainings, going-away parties, and more!

Our good friends at Caava Design designed this poster for free, so that we could offer it as a gift to you. Click here or above to download the hi-res printable version.

Every woman has a dream — of personal success or building a family or lifelong adventure, or any combination of 1,000 goals. And today more women than ever have the liberty and resources to pursue their dreams.

But in places like Uganda where conflict and poverty limit opportunity, women’s dreams are often postponed and forgotten. Families invest their few resources in opportunities for boys and men, while girls are pulled out of school and women are confined to little more than domestic servitude. Over time their dreams flicker and fade.

Not only is this unjust, but new research shows that empowered women are often a family’s best hope to overcome poverty. They typically invest 90% of their income in the education and well-being of their families, as compared to only 30% or 40% among men. And as families succeed, so do communities. And as communities prosper, so do nations.

Ember Arts exists to rekindle the dreams of women in poverty. We build successful business ventures in partnership with these women and invest in their training and education, and they invest in their families and communities as only they can.

Every woman has a dream. And as more women around the world have the liberty and resources to pursue their dreams, more families, communities, and nations will prosper.

Our good friends at Caava Design designed this poster for free, so that we could offer it as a gift to you. Click here or above to download the hi-res printable version.

Every woman has a dream — of personal success or building a family or lifelong adventure, or any combination of 1,000 goals. And today more women than ever have the liberty and resources to pursue their dreams.

But in places like Uganda where conflict and poverty limit opportunity, women’s dreams are often postponed and forgotten. Families invest their few resources in opportunities for boys and men, while girls are pulled out of school and women are confined to little more than domestic servitude. Over time their dreams flicker and fade.

Not only is this unjust, but new research shows that empowered women are often a family’s best hope to overcome poverty. They typically invest 90% of their income in the education and well-being of their families, as compared to only 30% or 40% among men. And as families succeed, so do communities. And as communities prosper, so do nations.

Ember Arts exists to rekindle the dreams of women in poverty. We build successful business ventures in partnership with these women and invest in their training and education, and they invest in their families and communities as only they can.

Every woman has a dream. And as more women around the world have the liberty and resources to pursue their dreams, more families, communities, and nations will prosper.

Today is the longest day of the year and the official start of Summer, and to kick it off right we’re teaming up with our good friends at Sseko Designs for an amazing Summer Photo Contest & Giveaway! Take a photo of one of your favorite things about summer (vacation, the beach, fireflies, you tell us!) and post it on the Ember Arts Facebook page (and/or on Sseko’s page), and then tell us all about it in the caption. We’ll choose our favorite photo one week from today, and the winner will get our Summer Prize Package: Ember’s Long Multicolor Necklace and Multicolor Ivy Bracelet, and a pair of Sseko sandals with your choice of straps!

Get your shutters snapping, and post your photos here!

According to Jon Evans on TechCrunch, sub-Saharan Africa is booming, thanks to high global commodity prices, Chinese investment, diaspora remittances, and the mobile phone revolution that finds rural farmers updating their Facebook profiles by text message. He quotes a McKinsey study that says, ““today the rate of return on foreign investment in Africa is higher than in any other developing region.”

Read the full article here.

Every woman has a dream. Ember Arts exists to rekindle the dreams of women in Poverty.

Agnes dreams of educating herself and her children, starting her own farm, and building her family a home. Thanks to our customers and retailers, she is well on her way. Her children are doing well in 2nd and 4th grades, she’s on the verge of finishing high school after nine years away, and just recently she bought land where she’ll soon be laying the foundation of a permanent home for her family.

Thank you for helping us make dreams come true.

This post goes out to all of my friends who run businesses or non-profits that employ poor women or men in different countries in order to improve their lives. It has one major point: we need to pay them more.

Many such programs making jewelry or bags or hats or shoes or clothes and selling them in the USA are making a positive impact around the world. I know a number of great organizations in Uganda that are using variations on this model to create life change. They’re doing great work, and I think we can do even more.

In my anecdotal research, I’ve found that most American organizations that operate this way in Uganda set salaries or wages to about 300,000 Ugandan Shillings (UGX) per month. This translates to about $130. And though this doesn’t sound like much to American ears, in Uganda this is way above the local standard.

But I don’t think it’s enough. That same UGX 300,000 is about what it takes to put one student through one 3-month term of secondary school in Uganda. So if a family has three children that belong in secondary school (a conservative number, by Ugandan standards), that entire salary is wiped out just paying for school every term. Nothing is left over for food, rent, healthcare, school fees for other children; much less saving for university tuitions or other long-term goals.

Obviously the math doesn’t work. Families need to eat, need a roof, need malaria treatment when someone inevitably falls sick. So students miss terms and whole years of schooling because of money problems.

We can do better.

There is a level of income below which any positive difference made is temporary, and above which real, transformational, generational change can happen. Let’s call this the True Poverty Line, the line between being stuck at your current economic level and having the chance to break through to prosperity.

Someone earning below the true poverty line might be able to provide some schooling and better food and occasional health intervention, but the impact of these changes is relatively small, especially across generations – the next generation is only marginally better off, if at all.

Those who earn above the true poverty line, however, can afford the big-impact changes: consistent schooling through the tertiary level, dependable healthcare, and savings to pursue future goals. These changes not only have a strong impact in the present, but their impact actually increase across generations, as a new generation of well-educated young adults brings their potential to bear on their families and communities.

If we are serious about making a long-term impact in Uganda and elsewhere, we need to be serious about where this True Poverty Line lies, and we need to cross it. Of course the exact line is different for every family depending on how many children they have, where they live, etc, but we can start by calculating an average figure based on the communities we work in, and being sure to at least hit the average.

If we do this, we will be witness not just to thankful friends given temporary reprieve from poverty, but to transformational, generational change, where families go from extreme poverty to university graduates in one generation. Imagine that future.

I’ve decided to write an annual commencement speech and just published my first one. Read the full text over at my personal blog, and enjoy the excerpt below:

This ability to think critically is a vital skill for succeeding in the world. But I would suggest to you that more vital yet is your decision about how you will use this skill, that your decision about how you will apply your critical insight is one of the most important decisions you will ever make.

As a natural critic, it is very easy to figure out what you’re against, what’s not worth your time, what is bound to fail. But it’s exponentially more difficult to decide what you are for, what is worth your time, what you are going to believe in and support and throw yourself into whole-heartedly.

And it is this much more difficult task of deciding what you are for, that is not only one of the great ingredients of success, but is precisely what the world needs from you in the era of history that you now inherit.