The power of the beads, part 2

Sometime back I blogged about the power of the Acholi beads, and the impact that our Uganda teams are making when they come here and create a market for the Acholi women to sell their paper-bead jewellery to.

Well, yesterday, whilst at Acholi Quarters for the afternoon with the current team, I learnt an extra bit of information that reinforces the extent of that impact.

Apparently, when the ladies make the beads, they have two options: if they have no buyers of their own to sell jewellery to, they can sell the beads loose to another person who does have access to a market and will turn the beads into goods to sell at that market.

Or, if they do have access to their own buyers, they can turn their own beads into jewellery and sell direct.

The numbers behind these two options are what I learnt yesterday, and are pretty impressive:

Option 1: selling the beads loose:

30 beads can be sold loose for 100 shillings

on average the ladies will each make 100 beads per hour, so that is 330ish shillings per hour.

Over an 8 hour working day, that would net them about 2600 shillings.

In itself, that is quite appealing, as the most they can earn at the quarry breaking up rocks, is about 1000 – 1200 shillings, and that involves sitting in the hot sun, hitting rocks all day with a hammer, getting hit by flying shards of rock, worrying that the children are at home unsupervised etc.

Move on to Option 2: selling the beads a jewellery:

14 beads make up one single strand bracelet, which sells for 1000 shillings.

So that same 30 beads can bring in 2000 shillings if sold in the form of bracelets.

Over an 8 hour period, the 800 beads made can be turned into 57 single-strand bracelets, which is 57000 Ugandan shillings – if they have people they can sell the jewellery to.

Compare that to the 2600 shillings if they have no market for the jewellery, and the impact of access to buyers is really evident

For Harriet and her group of ladies that form the cooperative that we work with, their buyers are all the teams of young people who come to John’s and spend at least a day visiting with the Acholi, or sometimes even a week.

All the teams get the opportunity to buy jewellery from the ladies, and a lot gets bought! Add to that the previous team members who are sending money for repeat orders, and we have an extra layer of demand for the jewellery, creating even more opportunity for the ladies to sell the finished products, and earn more money which is spent on putting the children through school, putting food on the table, paying the rent, and other basic needs.

Sometimes people will ask what difference can a team make going out for just one week, and would it be better to send the money for the airfare instead. Here is one simple bit of evidence of how we do make a difference by actually coming here. There are many other ways that we make a positive difference by coming in person, but the maths behind the selling of beads is one strong reason in itself.