Asking for Help and Saying Thank you

I’ve been thinking about what I want to write about - and my good friend Toan Lam told me to think about what outcome I wanted from writing a blog post. He teaches blogging, so I figured he might know a thing or two! :-)

The outcome - I want all our customers and the people who’ve helped us along the way to know the impact they’ve had. And I need to ask for still more help and support to keep the good momentum going.

Thanks to your purchases, our partners have been able to:

1. Pay the wages of refugee women who craft our jewelry to earn money for their families. The money has helped them buy medicine, food and care for their kids.

2. You’ve raised funds for learning centers that educate children from low income families in remote villages and in refugee camps.

3. You’ve helped independent artisans and small business entrepreneurs (including me) to stay in business and earn an income, and keep doing what they love, just a little bit longer.

4. You’ve supported organizations that help train and empower women, fund shelters for battered women and HIV drop in centers, in countries where these facilities are pretty unique.

5. You’ve supported the Haven Humane Society in their efforts to care for animals impacted by the Carr Fire in Northern California.

You did all this by buying some beautiful jewelry.

Thanks to your purchases, we are on to our second order from all of our partners, and are starting to evaluate new partners we can work with, in new countries. So watch out for some gorgeous new stock in the upcoming weeks.

We’ve learned so much along the way - how to operate a point of sale system; all about Sales tax, GST and VAT; which are the good Post Offices in San Francisco; how to craft a high quality bracelet - and also how to survive starting a new business and figuring out how to go about running it!

We’ve also learned about being kind to each other, not just to the people we work with. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s OK to ask for help and it’s OK to take a day or two off. I’ve also learned that I have to take a break to play and walk my dog, or he gets pretty upset with me.

We are so grateful.

For the opportunity to learn.

For you taking time to read this.

For everyone who’s donated their time, their talent, their advice and introductions.

For my cousins Ishka and Mareeni who hosted our first pop up, at Guyomar Winery which was an incredible success - thank you both!

For you - thank you for buying our jewelry and for being a part of this journey.

It’s a big dream and a big journey. I’ll keep sharing more about that, but for now, thank you for supporting us. There is so much more to come, and so much good we can do together.

How you can help:

• Please, please talk about us, review us, like us, tag us and share us. It’s a HUGE HUGE help to us, and will only take a minute of your time. We are on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

• Send us pictures of you wearing your jewelry, post it on Instagram and Facebook.

• Come to our events and buy more jewelry!

• Our website is live - create a customer profile and share your email. Even if you don’t want to buy - we want to share our stories and inspirations with you. We promise we won’t spam you with email, just one a month to tell you what we’re up to - and we want to hear from you.

• Buy from our webshop - and if you don’t see anything you like, tell us what you’re looking for! We’re always looking for new ideas and feedback, and we work directly with the makers, so we can experiment!

We are only a small company, but we won’t always be small. Together, we ARE making a difference, and we are spreading light. We’re going to keep chasing the sun! Thank you for chasing it with us.