'The O Bracelet' benefits African women touched by AIDS
November, 2007
Good news: Just in time for the holidays, there are more O Bracelets! Designed by me and others, they're available online at www.macys.com.
Bracelets crafted by women in Zambia also are now on sale at the Goldenstein Gallery, the Sedona, Ariz., gallery that exhibits my art. I'm so thrilled at how many of you have taken these African women to your heart and supported them with your purchases. Thank you!
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April 2007
In Rwanda and Zambia, women make bracelets designed by activist Mary Fisher and featured in O, the Oprah Magazine
AIDS-affected women in Africa are earning desperately-needed income by handcrafting beaded bracelets, with training from artist-activist Mary Fisher and backing from
O, the Oprah Magazine.
The O bracelet is a special project of
O, the Oprah Magazine, launched in the Style Section of its May issue. In Rwanda and Zambia, women who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS make the intricately beaded bracelets, for sale exclusively at
www.macys.com.
The limited-edition bracelets were designed by Fisher, a United Nations special representative who travels the world advocating for those who share her HIV-positive status, and who is best known for her moving speech about AIDS at the 1992 Republican National Convention.
The bracelets – in three styles called Strength, Hope and Beauty -- are priced from $50 to $135. They are produced through
Fair Winds Trading, a company founded by artist and social entrepreneur Willa Shalit to develop markets for the handiwork of artisans worldwide.
All partners in the O Bracelet venture -- Macy's, Fair Winds Trading, Fisher and
O, the Oprah Magazine -– are participating without compensation so that 100% of the profits can go to the women of Africa.
"These bracelets are a labor of love for me, and a lifeline for women in Rwanda and Zambia who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS," says Fisher. "Typically, women in these countries live on less than $1 a day. But those who make these bracelets earn up to $19 a day, which not only helps them sustain themselves and their families, but provides a source of pride and a sense of hope."
* * *
Through more than 15 years of raising awareness with her speeches, books and art, Mary Fisher developed a particular concern for how HIV/AIDS affects women and girls. "Everywhere I've traveled," she says, "I've seen women struggling to sustain themselves and their families against the huge burdens HIV/AIDS places on them. Too often, these women were powerless to prevent the sexual contact that brought the virus into their lives in the first place: They were raped or sexually abused, or in a relationship where they were faithful but their husband or partner was not. Then, once infected, so many of these women face stigma and ostracism in their communities. They are rejected and even abused by husbands and relatives, and lose all means of support. With no money, they can't send their children to school, or feed them, or take the food they need with their HIV medications."
Fisher began exploring ways to give AIDS-affected women a livelihood, and thus a way to provide for themselves and their children. She started in Zambia, where she has long supported the HIV/AIDS research and treatment programs at Lusaka's Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ). She knew, from visiting CIDRZ's teeming clinics and crowded support groups, that there would be no shortage of HIV-positive women eager to work. The key would be finding a product the women could make, with skills they already had or could learn; and a way to sell that product in the United States, with all profits returned to the women.
In June 2006, Fisher ran into her longtime acquaintance Willa Shalit – and learned that Shalit was pursuing the same kind of income-generation projects, for women in Rwanda. A decade after the genocide there, Shalit had founded The Path to Peace, a project in which once-warring Hutu and Tutsi artisans came together to weave baskets, for sale in the United States by Macy's. As Fisher now recalls the fateful conversation, "I said to Willa, 'What about women weaving baskets in Zambia?' And she saw my handmade bracelets on my arm and said, 'What about women in Zambia and Rwanda making those?'"
By fall 2006, Fisher was touring Rwanda and Zambia, scouting locations where women could gather and sitting with small groups of them to practice beading. Meanwhile, journalists at O, the Oprah Magazine had been preparing an article on the income generation projects, and the O-shaped bracelets inspired a plan: Why not offer a limited edition, through the magazine, called the O Bracelet? Late January found Fisher in Rwanda, and her colleagues Penny Morgan and Candy Barbag in Zambia, spending 14-hour days teaching women to fashion thread and beads into the three intricate designs the O editors had chosen.
Fisher recalls poignant scenes from those days. In one support group, after fashioning strands for the first two bracelets, when the women tried to curve the strands to close the circle, "beads burst all over the place – the women's faces were horrified!" Assuming that the strands snapped because the beading threads had been pulled too tightly, Fisher asked Rwandan friends for "the words to use" and then went from worker to worker, giving gentle guidance in the women's native Kinyarwandan language.
In another support group, when one woman's bracelet came out too long, Fisher realized it was because she could not count, to follow the number and pattern of beads she was told to use. "She was so embarrassed, she insisted on taking it apart and doing it all over," Fisher recalls. "And she said that with the money earned from her bracelets, she would keep her daughters in school so they'd never struggle as she had."
Thanks to the diligence of the Rwandan and Zambian workers, the allotment of 4,500 O Bracelets arrived at the U.S. warehouse with days to spare before they went on sale at www.macys.com. Now, the women in several support groups are eagerly working on additional bracelets and samples for Fisher's new designs.
Fisher marvels at how the project has given the women "pride in themselves, and real hope. It also is what community is made of – together, supporting and working with each other." Fisher says the workers told her they're deeply grateful that U.S. women will buy something precisely because it is made by, and will benefit, AIDS-affected women in Africa. "They love that idea... They so appreciate that there are people who care about them and want them to fight." (To read what women told Mary about how the project has changed
their lives, click here.)
* * *
Mary Fisher is an author, public speaker, and artist working in a variety of media, and a special representative of The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Her writings, speeches and photographs have filled five books, including her autobiography, My Name Is Mary. Her art has been exhibited in one-woman and group shows and is found in distinguished private and public collections throughout the world, including the permanent collection of the UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
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