everydaytrash

I have discovered what I believe to be the most politically correct items on the face of the Earth: jewelry from the Bead for Life project. Bead for Life is a community development program that allows women from Northern Uganda to earn a living for themselves by making beads out of old magazines and stringing those beads into shiny strands to be sold to yuppie Westerners. Nothern Uganda, in case you haven’t heard, has been plagued by civil unrest for years now. Also, the HIV rate is very high, in no small part because of the violence and instability, including rape, domestic abuse and all the other side effects of war. So, this little project of recycling old paper into profit benefits women who are either refugees, living with HIV or raising AIDS orphans or some combination of the three. You, too can feel good about yourself by buying beads.

Tags: Bead for Life, uganda

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 27, 2006 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Artistic Trash, Trash Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.