FashionABLE

Yesterday, I blogged about Ellita-Women at Risk (WAR), an organization founded by an Ethiopian woman (Serawit “Cherry” Teketel) to help women in Addis Ababa who have been forced into prostitution while trying to escape poverty escape from prostitution and rise out of poverty.

Barrett Ward (another Ethiopia adoptive parent) (you may recognize his name as the founder of Mocha Club) learned about WAR while living in Ethiopia for a year. After seeing how effective the program was, he learned that one of their biggest challenges was finding employers willing to partner with them to train and employ the women. FashionABLE was created for that purpose. At FashionABLE’s headquarters in Addis, women are trained to weave and dye scarves which are sold on-line and at upscale retailers. The scarves are high-quality and gorgeous! The proceeds compensate the women who make the scarves, providing income sufficient to support them and send their children to school, and also provide funding for WAR’s programs.



Sustainable ministries in developing countries not only focus on meeting the spiritual needs of the people they serve—giving them hope through Jesus—but also have the goal of helping the people they serve rise out of poverty (not by handouts, but through education, job training and creation, microfinance, business development, etc..).  This holistic approach enables those people to become self-supporting, to help developing their country's economy and give back to the ministry, which in turn enables the ministry to grow to serve others. An understanding of the challenges and complexities of poverty and a willingness to come alongside and empower people to rise above it many times is the very thing that opens doors to relationship and open hearts to the gospel message.  I would highly recommend the book When Helping Hurts for a great explanation of this concept and the importance of this type of approach.     

 

I was excited that Erica was able to include FashionABLE on our trip itinerary for several reasons. I loved that we would be able to roll our sleeves up and dye thread with the women—not because the women needed our help to do their jobs—they are such hard workers!—but to have an excuse to connect with them, love on them and encourage them. I also wanted to learn more about FashionABLE’s business model and of course, I looked forward to shopping in their showroom—I love jazzing up tees and sweaters with fun scarves!

Thank you, Suzy, for this image!

Before our trip, Erica contacted FashionABLE to see if they had any specific needs we might be able to help with. We were advised that most of the women were in need of new shoes, so we gathered shoes of all styles and sizes to donate on our visit. We toted them to the FashionABLE headquarters and arranged them all by size and style along the floor of the scarf stock room.

Thank you, Suzy, for this image! 

I was so impressed by the way the shoe distribution was handled and by how diligent and creative Ian and Brittany Bentley (the Bentleys are another AGCI adoptive family currently living in Addis and working for FashionABLE) were in applying sustainable principles even outside of the actual scarf business.

Ian and Brittany with their sweet Selah!

I love the way Brittany described it in her blog:

After meeting with the two managers at the office, we decided that these “free” shoes shouldn’t be just given out to the women. Knowing that shoes like this in Addis would go for between 1000-2000 Birr ($50-$100USD), this would have been a huge gift for these women. We imagined how thankful they would be to be given them, but we also want what’s absolutely best for each one of these women. With this in mind it has always encouraged us to put more thought into everything and not just take the most obvious or easiest solution. Today, we decied to not hand the shoes out for free but charge a nominal price for the shoes. Since the shoes were donated, we wanted to use the funds from the sale of the shoes in the best way. So we decided to take the fund and donate it to Woman at Risk (WAR), the rehabilitation program that most of the woman currently working at FashionABLE came from. So let me explain how incredible this worked out. We told the women that we had some beautiful new shoes that they could purchase in our stock room. At first they looked at us with a bit of confusion, because they might have expected us to just give them away but then we continued. We told them that we were selling them for about 100-200 birr ($5-$10USD) and that rather than keeping the money we would be donating it to help other women struggling in prostitution. So not only are the women at FashionABLE able to purchase their own shoes, but they are able to help other women who are in the position they once were in. We also gave them an opportunity to pay off the shoes over four months so that it would allow them to pay for it without as much of an up-front cost. It’s hard to articulate in writing, but every woman left today with a new pair of shoes that they were ABLE to pay for out of their own hard work while knowing that they were ABLE to help the other women through the same rehabilitation program they were helped through. This is sustainable development, and it’s allowing women to have the dignity and confidence that God has designed us to have no matter what culture of continent we come from or live on.

Thank you, Suzy, for this image!

Pretty awesome, huh?
        
For more information about FashionABLE (and if you’re looking for gift ideas for my birthday or Christmas (smile)), you can visit their website HERE.