What are Beaded Handicrafts?
We find paper destined for the trash heap and upcycle it into beautiful beads and beautiful jewelry.
Our skilled crafts people bring out the beauty and colors of the recycled paper we use by cutting it to accentuate the best qualities of the paper. We then roll carefully the paper into beads of varied sizes and shapes, then varnish each bead to provide a clear, shiny, durable coating so the beauty of the paper comes through. Beads then are assembled into stylish jewelry and conversation pieces.
The team of artisans trained by Water is Life Kenya, known as the Wonderbeaders, earn up to $10 a day, 2 times what they might earn elsewhere. The work is challenging, creative and our artisans feel proud to be a part of WILK ‘s Wonderbead team. We are a member of the Fair Trade Federation.
Who Benefits from Beads?
Jobs are hard to come by in Kenya, even more so for people with little education. People on our team like Mary and Rahel come to towns looking for opportunities to earn and find a life full of expenses: rent, food, children’s needs, then the calls from home in rural areas where siblings need school fees, harvests sometimes fail and people fall sick.
Earning income regularly means living a bit easier and having money to send home to areas where ladies carry water from shallow wells scratched out of the seasonal river beds.
Our prospering handicrafts business allows us to employ hardworking people including Mary and Rahel, who hope for a brighter future for themselves and their families.
In addition to the direct benefits of employment, profits from Water is Life Kenya’s bead business support our core mission of helping communities in southern rural Kenya solve their water problem by providing clean, sustainable water supply.
So the beads? They’re for our artisans, they’re for our communities, and, of course, they’re for you.
