This summer, Eleanor Campbell and I stayed with the Kaburu family in the village of Ndathi, Kenya for nearly two months. During our time there, we were both struck by the able-bodied, willing women who had almost no work opportunity. The majority of women spent their time doing casual labor – gathering firewood, knitting goods to sell, etc. – or on subsistence farming. These women were, and are, vivacious, talented, and inspiring. Many of them were taking care of several orphaned relatives in addition to their own immediate family, and often times I encountered women who had given up their own beds, shoes, clothing, or food in order to provide for the children in their household.

Eleanor and I were working with one of my professors from Wake Forest, Mary Martin Niepold, trying to figure out what could be done for these women. Kenyan women, on a whole, are driven and determined, motivated, creative, hardworking. They are simply in need of opportunity and direction.

With a little prompting from Poppy Buchanan and some research on Muhammad Yunus’ work, Njeri Kaburu and Esther Gathigia started several micro-lending groups in Ndathi and nearby villages. Through funding provided by Burning Bush, Inc., these groups have already been able to receive substantial loans, and Eleanor and I had the privilege of observing how the women in the community are beginning to reap benefits from the use of their loans. After seeing this success, we wanted to do more in the way of providing these women with an opportunity for employment.

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Let me back up. Last summer, I visited Kenya with my family. I was troubled by all the poverty, of which I understood the depth for the first time. I had never before spent much time in a country with a developing economy. While I was traveling across-country in a matatu that summer, I experienced a great inner struggle. I’d been to the slums, I’d been inside the mud huts, I’d spent time with the children who were orphaned by AIDS. But why was I there? Not simply for the thrill of experiencing things that before had only existed in my mind as photos in a National Geographic. God had me there for a reason, and I needed to act, to do something to assist these people, however marginal it may be.

The idea dawned on me a few days later, when I came across a factory in which single Kenyan mothers were working to create handcrafted ceramic beads. The beads were vibrant – they were gorgeous – and my artistic eye was immediately attracted to them. Quickly, I was arranging the beads into jewelry designs in my mind. I had a vague idea that I might be able to sell the jewelry to friends back home, both spreading the word about the people I had met, and raising money to help relieve their poverty. I bought four hundred beads, a huge investment for me, a penny-pinching student. The beads were quite pricey compared with most other goods in Nairobi.

At home last summer, I began playing around with the beads. I had never attempted to make or design jewelry, but I went to a craft store and bought the necessary tools. Then, after studying some of my own earrings and necklaces, I began to create different pieces. I started selling jewelry as I was working at Camp DeSoto, and it didn’t take long for the popularity to grow within my groups of friends. One person would buy a pair of earrings, others would admire them, and quickly the orders began coming in -more quickly than I could fill them. In less than a week, I had taken in over $1000.

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I decided to give the money back to be used in Kenya through African Leadership, an organization based in Nashville, TN, that is dedicated to training leaders across the continent and then supporting the projects that the leaders come up with, allowing Africa to be built up from within.

When I returned to Wake Forest in the fall, I began marketing the beads to friends, and within the year, their popularity grew hugely. My jewelry was sold and worn throughout the campus, and its popularity at Wake Forest got me thinking: This jewelry could be marketed and sold in other places too.

As I began to understand the hardships for the Kikuyu women of Ndathi and their need for employment, an idea came to Eleanor and me. What if we could move the manufacturing of the beads and the production of the jewelry to central Kenya? As it was, there was no way the business could grow with me working as the sole manager, designer, manual laborer, marketer, etc., etc. I needed employees to create the pieces of jewelry, and these women needed employment opportunities.

With this goal in mind, I met with a Ndathi women’s cooperative run by Esther Gathigia. I showed them the beads I had been working with and some of the jewelry I had created, and they were thrilled. The women loved the idea of creating such colorful, beautiful beads, and they certainly loved the idea of having steady employment. We hoped to train the women to craft the beads and assemble them into finished pieces.

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As we began discussing the idea, Eleanor and I started thinking through what we would need in order to make this venture work. We had the idea, we had willing laborers, but we needed land. We knew we would need land that had already been flattened and that had access to electricity, piped water, and to the main road in central Kenya. Miraculously, a Kikuyu friend found a plot of land that fit exactly what we needed, almost immediately after we started looking. Because of the scarcity of such things as running water and electricity in the central province, this land was rare and valuable, and, after much thought, we bought it.

Eleanor and I are now the co-owners of Plot 97, Mbiriri, Kenya, and, though our idea for the factory is good, I know very little about how to actually establish such a business. We are both working in our senior year to learn as much as we can about entrepreneurship and international business, but we have a lot to learn. We are excited to be working with these outstanding women, and we are praying that God will guide our steps and show us the directions in which we need to take this venture.

Alig Carroll