Written by Kylie Akins
When the Kibo Group first met Ida Bazonoona, she was struggling to provide for her family by farming on a small plot of land a mile away from her home and also trying to care for her son who risked losing his leg to an infection.
The Kibo Group formed a relationship with her, provided medical aid that saved her son’s leg and the resources to begin to sustain her household.
After this encounter, Bazonoona began gaining skills to provide for her family. She learned to craft necklaces from beads made of tightly rolled magazine clippings, each necklace requiring about six hours of work, and sold these through the Kibo Group. Realizing she was a successful role model through Kibo’s microeconomic development efforts, she now travels to other towns to teach women how to make these necklaces. Not only does she teach them to provide for their households, she also trains them in medical prevention, parenting and other important development lessons.
Spring Sing weekend, Harding business major students will be selling necklaces made by African women like Bazonoona, along with coffee beans grown by African farmers, through a project that will fund the Kibo Group.
The Kibo Group is a non-profit organization based in the U.S. formed to aid Africans in poverty-stricken areas through various economic development projects. It extended from a group of Harding graduates doing mission work in Uganda and is still mainly focused in that area but now also includes Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. Harding alumnus Clint Davis is currently president of the nonprofit organization Kibo Group, and Harding alumnus Bret Raymond is on the Kibo Group board and also CEO for the Asian Development Management Group, an economical development organization in Tibet.
“They are about helping these people in Africa develop their own projects, learn things about business and development and give them the resources to set them on the right foot to provide for themselves,” junior accounting major Rachel Klemmer said.
The coffee beans available for purchase are a part of a fair trade movement through the Kibo Group in the surrounding area in Africa.
“[The Kibo Group] created a way to give the farmers a fair value to pay their workers a fair living wage for that situation and still be profitable and use it in what they called the Source Café,” Phil Brown, Harding associate business professor and director of the accounting program, said.
The Source Café was also started by the Kibo Group as a center of economic development and example in Uganda. The café provides the coffee beans for sale through Kibo.
One is not lowering his or her standard of coffee to aid a good cause, Brown said, and the women he has spoken to about the necklaces agree that it is quality handiwork.
“The commodity that you are going to be acquiring is of equal quality as you would get at any coffee house,” Brown said. “You are getting a quality piece of jewelry for a comparable price and aiding a poverty-stricken area on something you might have bought anyway. To me it’s just a logical extension.”
Jessica Stroud, a junior accounting and financing major, said she hopes people will understand they are helping people in need by buying these simple items.
“It’s a way to help by incorporating this mission into your everyday life,” Stroud said. “I would like to think they would tell other people about it, and it would become this easy, everyday reminder that you’re helping the least of God’s kingdom, the people who can’t help themselves.”
Brown, Klemmer and Stroud each said they hope the stories behind these products will inspire other people to use their careers and talents to help others in need.
“There are a number of students that have a strong desire for international projects and strong interest in using their skills and career training for the sake of the kingdom in a real direct way,” Brown said. “And if we can marry up students’ interests, abilities and career directions with opportunities, they can make a significant impact one geographic area at a time.”
Klemmer and Stroud said they hope to set the foundations for a missionary service club for business majors before they graduate.
“Long term, what I hope would come out of it is more than organizational structure,” Stroud said. “I would like to see where it’s about students seeing a need and communing together to volunteer their skills.”
The necklaces and coffee beans will be available for sale at a booth in front of the Harding Bookstore with support from the Associated Women of Harding. The booth will be up Thursday, April 9, in the afternoon and all day Friday and Saturday. Bags of whole bean coffee (in both regular and decaffeinated varieties) and Busoga Bead bracelets will be $10 each, standard necklaces will be $15 and long necklaces, $20.
For more information on the Kibo Group or Project Kibo, go to their Web site, www.kibogroup.org, or email Rachel Klemmer atrklemmer@harding.edu.
