Our Mission and Vision: A Million Points of Light

Prosperity Candle celebrates women as a global force for peace and prosperity.

We invest in enterprising women living in distressed areas of the world who are excited to start their own businesses producing distinctive candles for local and international markets. We focus on places that are torn by conflict and social unrest, devastated by natural disaster, and trapped in never-ending poverty. Places like Afghanistan, Haiti and Rwanda.  Currently we are working in Iraq where our pilot project is well under way.   Read more …

We believe that when a woman is offered the opportunity to develop her entrepreneurial skills and create a thriving enterprise, she feels empowered and self confident, knowing that through her resourcefulness she can support her family with dignity and realize her dreams for a better future.

Our mission is to partner with thousands of women who are rebuilding their lives with determination, by providing them with the opportunity, tools and resources to start a successful business. Through our simple model of Shared Prosperity in which every entrepreneur can receive profit-sharing, each woman has the opportunity to earn well above a living wage, build her own enterprise, and provide employment and leadership in her community.

Our vision is bold – we imagine a world lit by millions of points of candlelight, each reflecting the resilience and courage of women who have survived inconceivable hardship and seek to create a better future.

To hear the women’s stories in their own words, visit Voices and our YouTube page.

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Why Do We Do What We Do?

Why women? . Women are the key to global peace and prosperity.

Prosperity Candle partners with women entrepreneurs because we deeply believe that investing in women as business leaders creates the foundation for a peaceful and prosperous society. This is especially true in places where women are left to single-handedly rebuild their lives and support families in the shadows of conflict and the aftermath of disaster.

Women-owned enterprises have a central role to play in the world as an untapped source of employment, economic growth, and social stability. When a woman thrives, an entire community thrives.

Why candles? . Candles are the ideal product and enterprise.

To support thousands of entrepreneurs in places of distress, we needed to find the right product and enterprise for a woman working from the safety of her home – an important consideration where there is conflict and unrest. The product must appeal to consumers around the world, and making it must offer a woman the opportunity to grow a successful business. Our focus is on how women can earn more than a living wage and provide employment for others.

Candle-making is a highly scalable craft that requires incremental investments in low-cost equipment – perfect for the environments we are working in. It is a business that can begin in the safety of a home, then easily be expanded to employ dozens of people. Candles enjoy large local and international markets, are wonderful gifts, and play a central role in countless traditions and gatherings throughout the world. They are also a universal symbol of peace, reflection and hope.

Why places of conflict and natural disaster? . This is our passion and purpose.

Prosperity Candle goes where we are needed most, where few others are able or willing to invest. We go where international assistance is providing relief, but global business perceives undue risk. We focus our efforts on those difficult places where our unique approach to supporting women entrepreneurs can best succeed in helping them to rebuild their lives – and thrive.

Why shared prosperity? . We want to maximize social benefit.

We have created a simple yet innovative model we call shared prosperity that prioritizes social benefit by sharing success. Taking fair trade a step further, we view a living wage as the starting point for a woman in a place of distress to develop into a successful entrepreneur. Our idea is to think beyond survival and meeting basic needs, and instead help women to build thriving businesses that can offer employment for others in their communities.

With this goal in mind, we share Prosperity Candle’s profits with every woman who makes high quality candles for us – not at the end of the year as a charitable donation, but every quarter as a valued partner in this social venture.

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Our Company

At first glance, Prosperity Candle may not seem unusual. We import, market and distribute an artisan product made by people in need of a helping hand. But in fact, it is so much more. This company was created to serve one purpose above all others:  empower women entrepreneurs in places of conflict and natural disaster to build thriving businesses.

We believe that business has a vital and transformational role to play in addressing the global challenges we face today, and that the well-being of women is critical to creating peaceful and prosperous societies. We also believe that the for-profit and non-profit sectors can accomplish much more with greater collaboration.

Six years ago we envisioned an innovative model we call Shared Prosperity. Simply stated, it is a business that prioritizes social benefit to a group that is among the most isolated from global commerce – women entrepreneurs in places of conflict, social unrest and natural disaster – through ongoing support, sustained market access, and regular profit-sharing. Taking fair trade a step further, our company considers a living wage as the starting point from which a woman can develop into a successful entrepreneur.

But the company on its own cannot deliver all of the support required by the entrepreneurs. It needs partners with aligned missions and special expertise.  Recognizing this, we have also created the Prosperity Candle Foundation, a linked non-profit organization with a mission to inspire and support women entrepreneurs (visit Prosperity Candle Foundation for more information).

Thus, Prosperity Candle is both a social enterprise and a foundation that work together to achieve sustainable impact. Our foundation focuses resources from organizations and individuals on helping women in places of conflict and distress, while the business ensures the sustainability of our work, based on a simple model of shared prosperity.

The diagram below shows how we have modified a conventional import model to leverage the strengths of each of our organizations.

Prosperity Candle is a new kind of business – an L3C (Low-Profit Limited Liability Company). This simply means that our legal structure is perfectly aligned with our mission. We prioritize social benefit over profit, and are committed to empowering women entrepreneurs through sustainable, market-based commerce. The Prosperity Candle Foundation is a registered non-profit organization applying for 501(c)(3) non-profit status.

We recognize that working in regions torn by conflict or recovering from a natural disaster presents significant challenges. Success will depend on a sense of shared purpose, determination, and deep commitment to building enduring relationships with all of our stakeholders.

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Our Team

We are a committed team of individuals who have spent decades supporting artisan entrepreneurs in developing countries. Together, we bridge the worlds of international development, social enterprise, importing and marketing, and promoting women’s entrepreneurship. We are passionate about our mission, and grounded in decades of relevant experience.

Ted Barber has spent the past eight years working on poverty alleviation projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Inter-American Development Bank, and other agencies throughout Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. His focus is building successful enterprises through sustainable access to global markets.  For more than a decade before that, he co-founded and managed a successful import and trade consulting company that focused on handcrafted products made in emerging markets.

Amber Chand is the founder of the Women’s Peace Collection, a social enterprise that supports women’s micro-enterprises primarily in regions of conflict and post-conflict, including Afghanistan, Palestine, Rwanda and Sudan. The company sells high quality gifts created by talented craftswomen rebuilding their lives in the shadows of war, genocide, civil strife and crippling poverty. Recently, she launched The 100 Women: 100 Hopes Campaign to support women who are struggling in a Western Darfur refugee camp to earn a dignified livelihood.

Siiri Morley has worked on poverty reduction and sustainable economic development projects in Afghanistan, Croatia, Ecuador and Kenya, and was a business capacity development advisor with the U.S. Peace Corps in Lesotho. She received her MBA from the Heller School of Social Policy & Management at Brandeis University in December 2009, and has consulted on social impact measurement to design firm IDEO, and interned at Preserve, an eco-friendly home products company that promotes socially responsible business practices.

In the Field

We are very fortunate to work with an incredible pilot project team in Baghdad. Without them, this work would be impossible (and much less fun).

Ibtesam is the Director of Income Generation in the Women for Women International office in Baghdad, Iraq. She has been absolutely critical to the success of our operations! Since the pilot began, she has been busy training entrepreneurs, handling shipment logistics of candle-making kits and raw materials, paying the entrepreneurs, packing up candles, monitoring quality control, and keeping the women engaged and motivated. She is a trusted part of the team and we are thankful for her contributions.

 

George wears so many hats in the Women for Women Baghdad office that we are not sure how to describe his role. To us, he has been wonderful in complementing the work that Ibtesam does. George has ensured smooth communications with the team in Iraq, has been the videographer for most of our YouTube videos, and has taken on the production and shipping logistics with gusto. Thank you, George, for all of your help (and great Skype chats!).

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Advisors

We are in the process of assembling a board of advisors to help us achieve our mission.

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Pilot Project

Having conceived of Prosperity Candle in 2008, we thought it made sense to begin with a pilot project, which is now nearing completion. The goal is to field-test our custom candle kits, and make sure our model is sustainable and offers women in places of distress the opportunity to thrive.

So in March 2009 we partnered with Women for Women International – a remarkable organization dedicated to helping women survivors of war rebuild their lives – to implement a year-long pilot in Iraq. We started by training their staff, who subsequently taught 4 Iraqi women in Baghdad how to make candles using our equipment and guide. These first “chandler-entrepreneurs” field-tested the kits and then became our trainers for 50 more women entrepreneurs.

Over the past 3 months, these women (whose stories you can read at Voices) have dedicated themselves to learning the art of the chandler (candle-maker). Attending training workshops and practicing at home, they have acquired skills to make high quality candles for local and export markets. In February 2010, we conducted a comprehensive quality review, and by the close of March we will ship the first Prosperity Candles for sale in the U.S. For this coming Mother’s Day, we will be offering beautiful, high quality pillar candles handmade by mothers and daughters of Iraq.

Needless to say, we are ecstatic. As of today, 50 women in a place of conflict have been given the opportunity to start their own businesses. All will be able to earn an income that is above the minimum wage in Iraq, and some of the most skilled candle-makers have the opportunity to earn twice that amount – close to the average wage in Iraq – simply by investing in more candle molds.

To hear the women from the pilot project in their own words, visit Voices and our YouTube page.

This is just the beginning! Following an assessment of impact in May, we will begin expanding the current program to include many more women who will have the opportunity to grow their businesses, earn well above a living wage, and provide employment for others. In June we will fulfill our pledge to the Clinton Global Initiative to enable 40 more women to start their own candle businesses. By early 2011 we plan to launch our next pilot in Rwanda, Haiti or Afghanistan. And by 2014 we aim to partner with more than a thousand women entrepreneurs in places of distress, each with their own thriving enterprise and group of employees.

Want to participate? Visit Products to buy a candle, and visit the Prosperity Candle Foundation to find out how you can help a woman start her own business and rebuild her life. Or just send us your ideas, suggestion and comments at Contact Us.

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