Our Story

Beads of Hope Africa has a dual mission:

1. To empower women currently living in poverty through economic opportunity.
2. To provide scholarships for orphans, the most vulnerable population, from a future life of poverty through education and career opportunity.

How this started: In 2008, Michelle Boice was in Uganda leading relief teams when she met a group of women, displaced by the internal civil war in Uganda. These women make beautiful handcrafted art bead necklaces from recycled paper to support their families.  Prior to bead making, these women were breaking rocks manually at about $1.50 a day to support their families.  Michelle created a fair trade company -Beads of Hope Africa, to get the women’s bead products to the North American market and founded the Beads of Hope Africa Cooperative in Uganda to provide resources and training for the women.  This provides for those in need now… but Michelle was also concerned about a long term solution to poverty. A former teacher, she knew education is a part of this solution. Partnering with an established orphan education program, Parent’s Concern for Young People, Beads of Hope Africa invests in scholarships for the most vulnerable members of Ugandan society… orphans who would otherwise end up in poverty.

WHO is Beads of Hope Africa: Michelle Boice, along with a founding group of twenty one craft members, and a panel of Ugandan advisors was created a fair trade cooperative in 2008. Future plans are to include additional craft members as the fair trade initiative grows and demand expands to include the need for more members.

WHAT: Our mission and purpose is to help improve lives of those living in poverty in developing nations, specifically in Africa.

WHERE: In Uganda, our efforts are centered in Kampala, around the Acholi Quarter where the families displaced due to the internal civil war in northern Uganda live.  Our scholarships are geared towards the orphans at Parents Concern for Young People’s school Fort Portal High School, in Fort Portal. Our USA headquarters is in the Chicago Metro area.

WHY: Our goal is to alleviate the immediate symptoms of poverty and to create a lasting solution to break the cycle of poverty. To best accomplish this is with economic opportunity for individuals to create immediate financial relief and educational opportunity to create long term and lasting solutions to poverty.

HOW: We do this by using fair trade guidelines (see link) to develop work opportunity and income for women, through using their traditional African crafts and working as a cooperative to create new products and ideas using collective education. These products are then sold to the American market through Beads of Hope Africa.  Sales in the United States generates revenue which provides for the scholarships for orphans.