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Products: 61
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Hits 129,012
Prices: USA Dollars
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About Us |
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Talking Beads Co Op
Introducing the jewelry that helps women help the world
-- one bead at a time.
Welcome to the Taking Beads website, an online boutique of jewelry and clothing handcrafted by women of South Africa.
Talking Beads is a collective of poor, rural women determined to empower ourselves and our communities by running our own business and creating works of extraordinary beauty. Our slogan? “We believe in doing things ourselves instead of waiting for handouts.”
Every necklace, bracelet, or broach you purchase from us will not only enhance your wardrobe, but help us to provide for our families and become more self-sufficient.
Hear our story. Click on to our catalogue. And know that with each product you buy, the phrase “shopping to your heart’s content” will take on a whole new depth of meaning.
Our jewelry not only sparkles, it problem-solves.
How many other necklaces can you say that about?
________
Poverty. AIDS. Civil War.
Isn’t it time you heard about something hopeful happening in Africa?
Too often, news headlines dwell only on Africa’s problems. But Talking Beads is about solutions – solutions that we Africans are creating ourselves.
Like the beads we work with,Talking Beads is small. But though it’s a small solution, it’s a significant one. Since many of us are homebound or caring for family members with AIDS, beading is the only livelihood available to us. In the townships we live in, the money we earn from it can go a long way. Every item we make and sell enables us to better care for our families, uplift our communities, and become more self-sufficient.
But we earn far more than income through Talking Beads. We also re-gain our dignity. We build up self-confidence. We develop skills that we have been passing on to other members of our communities. And we gain enormous pleasure from sharing the beauty of our local culture with the rest of the world.
Like the beads we work with, the more there are of us together,
the greater we shine.
“OUR STORY”
Talking Beads was launched in May 1997 when a rural woman had the idea to organize rural women all over South Africa to make beaded handicrafts – and to make a successful business out of it.
Like many people who come up with creative solutions, Tembeka Nkamba-Van Wyk was inspired purely by accident. Working for the government in Pretoria, she was going to work one day when she encountered a woman named Joanna from a nearby township, who was selling fat cakes on the steps outside her office building. Tembeka asked her why she was selling such food in an area where no one ate fat cakes; Joanna replied that she simply felt safer downtown than anywhere else. When Tembeka asked her if she had any other skills or passions that could be put to use, Joanna said that she could do beadwork. Tembeka then pulled out her last 200 rand and gave them to Joanna to buy beads.
Together, Tembeka and Joanna began to create and sell beadwork. When Tembeka realized that her government office often purchased trinkets from Malaysia to give to dignitaries as gifts, she and Joanna set about designing native gifts for South African officials, embassies, and corporations to give instead. Soon, they received so many orders that Tembeka left her government job and founded the Talking Beads Cooperative.
Today, an idea that began with two women on a sidewalk is now a collective of over 4,500 rural beadworkers. And today, Joanna owns her own home– a home that she built with the money she earned from her beadwork.
We provide great value products for our customes and as a result have managed to develop a large client base. Please feel free to have a look around and contact us with any questions. | |
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