It’s 6am here in Ethiopia as I type this and set it to auto-send during your morning hours. I’m sitting outside in the cold waiting for the sun to rise over the African mountains.
I couldn’t sleep. My heart was, and still is, heavy after what was a hard day for so many yesterday. As I found a wifi connection last night and caught up with friends via text, I felt hopeless: like there’s a huge mountain in front of us that’s unscalable.
So I’m up chasing light this morning. I’m sitting here literally staring at a dark mountain so I can visually watch the sun rise up and envelope it.
Just in case you haven’t been following our adventures on Instagram this week, I’m here in Ethiopia with a team of customers to show them your impact in action.
Because of your purchases, we’re able to donate a substantial amount of money each month to our strategic nonprofit partner, Help One Now, to put women through a life altering small business training program.
Women are chosen to go through this program because their families have been classified as (quite literally) on the edge of life.
They have been severely marginalized by power systems in their country, and the small business training programs we fund equip them with entrepreneurship coaching + in-kind funding to launch their business.
But this week I’m learning that it gives them much more than that. It gives them the opportunity to see the courage + determination inside of them. And that’s what we’ve been seeing this week.
I wish you could be walking these red dirt roads with me, listening to these incredible women entrepreneurs who were once oppressed but are now fighting against oppression, and teaching the most vulnerable women in their communities to do the same.
These women are extremely outnumbered in their country by those in positions of power who make decisions and live their lives in ways that promote financial poverty + poverty of spirit. Yet, they continue to fight darkness with light. And it’s working.
As I’m typing this to you, the sun is taking it’s place high in the sky and I just had this thought for us…
We can’t set our focus on the dark mountain in front of us. It will only overwhelm us and render us hopeless. Let us instead set our gaze towards the light that will illuminate the courage + determination inside each of us…and inside other women as well.
A new day is dawning. In Ethiopia, and also in America.
Onwards,
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