It’s no secret that when money gets tights, like it is for most Americans just now, one of the first things to be squeezed off the budget is giving to charities and non-profits. This is understandable for families trying to pay the mortgage and keep food on the table. Unfortunately it hurts those who can least afford it - the global poor who depend on those organizations.

Socially Proactive Businesses, like Acholi Beads, have one great advantage over non-profits: We don’t rely on donations. Quite the opposite in fact. Our business is set-up so that Americans can make an income right alongside our Acholi partners.

Almost all of our sales are made through stores or other resellers, who mark Acholi Beads up to a competitive market price and reap the benefits, while simultaneously growing the market for our jewelry and changing lives in Uganda. Everyone wins.

And in a down economy like this one, Americans need an income just like everyone else. So while nonprofits lose volunteers and donors, Acholi Beads is gaining reps and resellers. People love the chance to make the world a better place, and pay some bills while doing it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think nonprofits do necessary and amazing work around the world.  I’m just exploring the different ways that such work can be done, and I think that Socially Proactive Business is emerging as one of the most powerful and sustainable modes of changing the world for the better.

For info on how you can get involved, visit our Contact page here.

Acholi Beads is part of what I call The New Luxury.  The New Luxury is our society’s response to consumerism’s inability to add meaning to our lives, while recognizing its power to improve livelihoods.

The New Luxury is smarter than advertising.  It doesn’t seek its values in airbrushed images or phrases engineered to be memes.  The New Luxury abides in story.  It basks in the soft fabric of lives woven together by intention and fate.

The New Luxury transcends the sterile front of retail shelves.  It peers into the true history of products, joining hands with the many people behind the supply chain, on the far side of the world, who brought the products into existence.

The New Luxury doesn’t rely on the weight of a price tag, but knows the glory of connection to stories larger than any dollar figure, more important than any bragging rights.

The New Luxury acknowledges that value cannot be bought, but that we can buy based on values.  It asserts that meaning is broader than a slogan, more attractive than a photo, and deeper than any pockets.  It assures us that beauty created in a studio pales when compared to the faintest reflection of real love.  And The New Luxury insists that we will not be blinded by advertisements or manipulated by marketing; we are too smart and passionate to allow our dollars to be tempted away by false promises of happiness.

The New Luxury chooses joy, truth, hope, and love.

When we walk into one of our favorite stores (for me, the Apple store) and look at a shiny new product, we miss one of the most fundamental aspects of what that product is.  We might think about what it does, how it will make our lives easier or more fun, how we will feel cooler once we own it.  We refer in our minds to the advertisements or the pop culture references or to what our friends have said about the product.  But we forget where it comes from.  In fact, we forget that it comes from anywhere at all.

It seems unnecessary to say ‘things come from somewhere,’ but I think that we as a society are quickly forgetting this.  We fail to realize when standing before our next purchase that it was made somewhere, by a person, or even many people, and that often it was shipped thousands of miles to be there in front of us.

Products have a history.  And I believe that this history is more important than what the TV ads say about a product.  Shouldn’t we be more connected to the real person whose hands assembled the product in our hands than to a character on a screen who is paid to sell it to us?  Aren’t our lives directly connected to theirs through these products?

Acholi Beads is completely transparent about the history of our products.  Our jewelry is made by 16 women from the Acholi tribe who live in a slum near their country’s capital.  They work from their homes, rolling strips of recycled paper into beautiful beaded necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

I hope that your understanding of this history enhances your appreciation for Acholi Beads.  Know that each piece began its life on another continent, in the hands of a woman whose life is better because you now own her creation.

Next time you go out shopping, think about the history of the products that you see.  And think about how much the world would change if we all cared about these little histories.