Bundles (and Bundles!) of Beads

Every month bundles of beaded products are brought in to the Wild Hope team here in Arusha. But Wild Hope's artisan-made products begin to take shape miles and miles and miles from where they end up on display. Carefully threaded onto the stiff wire and bent by the strong, skilled hands of our Maasai friends, the products first take shape in the remote villages where our friends live.

From the village, the product is loaded onto the backs of donkeys and walked for half a day to connect with a friend who has a Land Rover. The Land Rover delivers the product along dirt trails to the closest "public transport vehicle" which travels along the paved road to Arusha. It can be a 2 day process just to bring the product in to town.

Each month, Peter Ole Kukan and 2 or 3 of the Artisan women deliver the wares to Tammy, Grace and Philemon. Together, they now begin the 3 day process of sorting, counting, scrutinizing for quality control, paying, making new orders, assisting the women as they supply with new stock, and sending the little party of Maasai friends back out. When the delegation gets home, the process begins again with 80+ women launching into the work to fill the new orders.


The lovely ornaments and decorations move along to buyers. Some of them end up in high end tourist shops in our town. Some of them end up in Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. All of them provide a fair trade for traditional artisans who would not necessarily find employment otherwise.

We love the story of how the product gets from village to town. Even more, we love the stories of families provided for by the faithful work of these skilled women. Proceeds go back into the project, building communities in far away places.

Dry Fruit Goodness

A couple of posts ago we mentioned Wild Hope's new income-generating project for women.

Safari Snacks is the new initiative that employs 2 local women in need. The ladies are busy drying fresh local fruit (mango, banana and pineapple) and selling it in our neighborhood grocery store. It’s a very popular product with tourists and locals alike and, at this point, we can't always keep up with the demand. We are being approached to expand and grow this project into a larger industry.

We would love for you to be praying for this project. We need wisdom as to HOW and WHEN to expand so as to benefit more women through training and employment. We need wisdom regarding our role-- when we stay with something and when we let it become its own thing alongside of Wild Hope. We want to see the project include some level of spiritual nourishment as the number of involved women grows. We already know that these 2 lovely ladies share their hearts and lives and encouragement with each other as they work and laugh and pray together.

We are so pleased to be a practical help to women in need. Thanks for your prayers.

A BIG Thank You!

Big thanks to our wonderful friends at 24-7 Prayer!!

Every year at the global gathering of the 24-7 family, there is a raucous auction, done with great celebration and hilarity, that raises funds for someone who is close to the movement and in financial need. This year it was decided that half of whatever was raised would be sent to Africa via Byron and Lisa so that we can assist an old Maasai woman who is like family to Wild Hope.

Ngoto Milai sold most of her cows to educate her children. Sadly, the local school was so under average that her children never scored well enough to go on and complete their high school education and they have never been able to find paying jobs. Her last couple of cows died in the drought a few years back. When Byron was in her area some months ago, his Maasai Mom asked him if there was any way we could help her begin some sort of small business so she could provide for her children and grandchildren.

Everyone was shocked and delighted when the auction raised $2,000! You would have been shocked too, given that the items sold were things like a spiral notebook decorated with photographs and jar of home made jam :-)

With the $1,000 that we have for this dear Maasai mother, we will be able to help in two significant ways. First off, a gift of goats or a couple of cows will be a huge blessing. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we have enough in hand to set up a small business co-operative with this lady and a few of her friends who are in similar circumstances.

We are absolutely thrilled we can bring two forms of assistance with this one wonderful gift!

And by the way, Lisa put one of our Christmas stars, made by Wild Hope Artisans, in the auction and it sold for 50 euros. That's $70 and that's a record for a Wild Hope Artisan star!

Oh and PS... If you hear a rumor that Lisa was called upon during the auction to enter a Flamenco Dance-Off (the crowd pooled their resources and paid 100 euros to see the contest) then we thought we'd better let you know that, yes, it's true. She danced her little heart out :-)

Artisans on the Silver Screen :-)

The Wild Hope Artisan Project



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Wild Hope's good friend, Jenelle, has been visiting here in Tanzania for the last three weeks. One of her helpful projects has been to edit together this 2 min video about The Wild Hope Artisans. The idea was to have a brief visual to tell people who purchase these products in the U.S. a little more about the partnership we have with these Maasai women.

We are blessed indeed to be a part of empowering these friends.

Enjoy! (And thank you so much, Jenelle!)

Artisan Project Grows!

The lovely ladies brought their lovely work by the donkey load!

Tammy and Wild Hope's dear friend, Julia Veenstra, spent the weekend together working on new product ideas, quality control, and other areas of training.

Remember back in December when we were projecting that the project would soon be helping more than these six original ladies? Well there are now 32 additional Maasai women benefiting from our Artisan Project.

God is good! Hurray!

Christmas Angels!

The Team here at Wild Hope is very excited about angels!

Allow us to tell you why...

These 6" angels, (plus a slightly larger version and some Christmas stars) are made by a group of financially struggling Maasai ladies that are friends of ours. Over the years we have helped them market some of their traditional bead work and provide a little income for themselves. But during this last year we've encouraged them to a new level!

Julia Veenstra, an American artist living in East Africa, is a friend of Wild Hope. Julia has a passion for the work of local artisans and for creativity to be released and used. She has a passion for women to be helped and for local women to find ways to support their families.

In September Wild Hope hosted our six Maasai artisans friends and Julia for a weekend of training and fellowship. As mentioned, Wild Hope has been able to facilitate different opportunities for these ladies to sell their work, but this was the first time we planned a seminar for them to improve and market their wares.

With Julia's artist eye and knowledge of western markets to guide them, the ladies designed this Christmas Angel. Isn't' she beautiful? You can click on the photo for a larger view.

We wish we could offer these to you for sale (and hopefully we will one day) but our production levels are not up to exporting yet. However, these pretty little ornaments have been selling like hotcakes in Kenya this season. And guess what! A brand new little gift and coffee shop in Arusha, Tanzania is opening and planning to stock them immediately as well.

We are so pleased to have just sent $1,000 of profit to this small group of artisans. Do you have any idea how much money that is to women who live on about $1 a day? Even divided between the six of them, this is a huge blessing of provision. For those of us who have stayed in Maasai villages and experienced life among them, there is a tremendous sense of joy as we think of how this income will help.

What is it we've heard Bono say?

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Give a woman micro-credit, she, her husband, her children and her extended family will eat for a lifetime."

The Wild Hope Artisans project is in a seed stage. We are praying and working toward training more women and expanding the work. We're looking down the road to Christmas 2007 and wondering how many more this project will be blessing by then.

Praise God with us for the assistance this job-producing micro-enterprise has already brought... And for what it will do in the future!