The Haitian Bead Project by Terrie and Naomi

Friday afternoon, Debbie stopped at the school and asked if we could go meet with the women who work with The Haitian Bead Project - she had been trying to set up a time for us to do this and she had just found out that they were waiting for us, so we figured we had better get going!! Sometimes setting up a time to meet in Haiti becomes pretty tricky with not many people having access to phones and electricity. Gathering a group of people at a time when they don’t normally meet really depends on word of mouth and spreading the message, so when we heard they had gathered to meet us, we knew it was pretty special!

We first heard about the Haitian Bead Project through Debbie last year when we were starting to plan our family mission trip to Haiti. Debbie was friends with the founder of the organization. Dorina and her husband are missionaries from Fresno, California and along with their children, they live part of the year in Haiti and part of the year in Fresno. Dorina was seeing, first-hand, the need for work for the women of Pignon and the surrounding rural communities. She was able to begin this project with some very simple supplies yet creating some beautiful jewelry! She had seen beads made from colorful pieces of magazine pages and had also heard how these beads created into beautiful necklaces were beginning to make a sustainable income for women in Africa. She wanted to do something similar in Haiti. Because of her work as a missionary and travelling back and forth between California and Pignon, this gave her the perfect platform to begin this organization. The Haitian Bead Project was born and we are so excited to be working with them and to have had an opportunity to work with them! Dorina Gilmore’s (the U.S. coordinator) husband’s grandfather was the original missionary for the church, school and orphanage where the project is based. That has been the connection for her development of this ministry project in the U.S.. The school has all elementary grades and is a growing and thriving school in the middle of Pignon. The complex is a beautiful location and a little bit secluded with a beautiful courtyard area in the center. Back to our visit that day, we rushed to gather the duffle bag stuffed with donated supplies of flattened cardboard, Elmer’s glue, fishing line, scissors and seed beads. Debbie drove us to meet them, we were so excited! Conner came along too which was fun because he’s been very involved and has known and worked with us throughout the time we’ve been working with the project, so we were glad he was able to come as well! The “base-camp” for The Haitian Bead Project is this complex of elementary school, church and orphanage.

The women meet twice per week as a whole grouo for business meetings. Then, they make the jewelry at home! This, once we heard more about it, made complete sense! These women have young children at home to care for and if they were gone from home often to make the jewelry, it wouldn’t work for them as moms and caregivers. So, coming to meet twice per week for an hour or two and then making the jewelry at home really frees them up to create their work schedules around the needs of their families. What a great idea to do it this way! Having these twice per week meetings, though, allows the group to support one another, learn new techniques for making the jewelry, design new pieces, distribute supplies and offer support for all the women involved with the project.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a man who serves as local coordinator for the project. He took our heavy duffle bag filled with donations out of Debbie’s car and together we carried it to the classroom. As we entered the school-yard, the courtyard was quiet, clean and empty – kind of back off the busy street in downtown Pignon. We went to a second floor classroom and were shocked to walk into a classroom filled with colorful beaded jewelry spread over every school desk and table in the room with 30+ women lining the outside walls- the room was “packed full”.

It was OVERWHELMING and we couldn’t believe they were all there to meet US! They asked us if we could unload the donations first and the leaders immediately began distributing the cardboard amongst every woman in the room- WOW! We were really worried we wouldn’t have enough for each of the women to have a few pieces each, but there seemed to be just enough to share with everyone in the room! These throw-away cardboard boxes that we don’t think twice about provide a living wage to these women and their families and this allows them to create beautiful beads to make necklaces, bracelets, earrings and more! Something so insignificant to us can mean so much to someone else. They shared that the seed beads and other donations would be distributed fairly after we left or at a future meeting. We had been instructed not to buy in front of the women gathered- but look & admire their products. Debbie and the coordinator shared with us that the women need to experience the potential impact and resource that our interest and support for their project can have. Through our efforts in collecting supplies for their artwork and sharing their stories back in the U.S., doors can open for broadening their market base and hopefully create a sustainable project that can provide a living wage for each of the women involved with The Haitian Bead Project. The women were so kind and thankful that we would want to come and meet them in person and bring them supplies, but at the same time, very surprised by this as well. It’s still a new project and getting them to understand the outside connections to what they are doing is still a little harder to comprehend for them. The coordinator and Debbie did a great job of explaining some of this to them. The ins and outs of a new business in the states can be difficult to fully understand and the same thing was going on here! Just learning how to do this and make it viable for all the women is very necessary for the sustainability and the connections that are being made through meetings like this can help everyone in the long run! The women and coordinators wanted to pray with us before we left. During the prayer requests, the women did encourage us to develop potential markets for their jewelry and we promised them that we were. They were so thankful that we came and were so delighted that we would take the time to collect the supplies that we did and bring them all the way to Pignon just for them! It was such a great “full circle” experience we were able to have!

As we were leaving they were excited to look at the new supplies as well as understand our connection to the work they do and how we are wanting to partner with them to help each of them live a more comfortable life by fulfilling some of their goals whether that is to provide food for their families, build a home or even go to school in the future! The stories each of these women have and what has brought them to this project and what they’d like to do with the money they earn is just so simple and just for things we would take for granted in many cases! Just a joy to be able to meet them face to face know the connection we can have with them for years to come hopefully! As we were leaving, one of the women, Madame Moise wanted to give me a necklace and thanked me for coming to meet them and for our work with their project in the US! What a special and sweet gift! This necklace is so special to me and will always remind me of the day we were to meet and learn more about this wonderful project! We would love to share more about this project with you and would ask that you keep these women in your prayers along with Dorina and her family as they continue to create a sustaining and life-giving project to these women and their families in Pignon and the surrounding villages! What a gift it is to share in this project and what a gift that they were so honored and touched by the time we would take to help them and bringing supplies all the way from the US to help them continue their work! We hope to continue to support them by collecting supplies as well as selling their beautiful jewelry and share their story! Hopefully we will be able to return some day and visit them again! For more info, please go to www.haitianbeads.org You can also find The Haitian Bead Project on Facebook, check it out today!