- Hi everyone, I'm Melisa Griffith, Operations Director
for the Young Living Foundation, and we are coming to you
from global headquarters here in Utah.
We are so thrilled to have Basma Barham with us,
who represents one of our women-led artisan groups.
Basma flew all the way from Bethlehem
to be here with us today.
So thank you so much, we are so excited
to chat with you today.
- I am so excited too, thank you very much, really.
It's highly appreciated.
- Basma is the Director of Public Relations
for the Holy Land Handcraft Cooperative in Bethlehem.
To provide a little bit of background,
the Holy Land Handcraft is one of the many artisan groups
that we are partnering with
under the Young Living Foundation's
Developing Enterprise pillar.
Through our Developing Enterprise pillar,
we are helping women who live in challenging conditions
build marketable skills, start small businesses,
secure fair wages and ethical work, and to become
deeply connected to a supportive community
of women entrepreneurs.
We have seen and research has confirmed
that when women have the power to make their own money
and have control over how they use it,
this not only empowers them economically,
but it also is one of the best ways
to help reduce global poverty.
Women empowerment also helps improve
the health and nutrition of the family,
and increases the chances of education
for the next generation.
Over the last couple of years, we've been able
to bring multiple artisan items
to the Young Living marketplace.
Through these orders, we've now connected
with over 15 women-led artisan groups around the world,
and we are going to talk more about the direct
and indirect impact your purchases are making
for these women.
Now that I've given you a little bit of background
on our Developing Enterprise pillar,
let's hear from Basma, who has seen the impact firsthand.
- Yes.
- Can you tell us what the Holy Land
Handicraft Cooperative is?
- The Holy Land Handicraft Cooperative
is a society started in 1981,
and it's a social enterprise
and part of our goal is to lead the way
in women's empowerment in Bethlehem,
and we want to show that social enterprise can work
even in the hardest of the times.
Before we started working with Young Living,
the Cooperative represented about 35 members,
but we have also been able to bring on
an additional 100 artisans into our network
because of the tremendous orders that we have
from Young Living, something which is really
very good for our community in Bethlehem.
- So let's actually talk about fair trade.
The idea of fair pay and working conditions
is very, very important to the world of handcraft,
and Basma, you served as the chair
of the world's Fair Trade Organization in Africa
and the Middle East, which is awesome.
Can you tell us what fair trade is
and what it means to artisan groups
like Holy Land Handicraft?
- Yeah, the fair trade principles,
it's the most important thing
that we are trying to keep our people involved with,
which is to give a fair price,
the gender equality, to improve the placement
that people are working, and to take care
of the environment.
This is, and there are 10 principles
but this is the most important thing
that we should always focus in,
and that is one thing that I want to stress,
is that these Young Living orders
have not just placed the individual artisan workshops
and their families, but it has also helped
the entire community, because we work
with the local printers to get the tags printed
that come with the items and also,
to get the packaging suppliers and many, many other
of the raw materials.
This order came in the worst time for all over the world.
People were not believing that we have
this big order.
Even when I was giving the orders to the artisans
or to the print office or to any other,
they were surprised, they were not believing
that these kinds of orders is coming,
and they many times were asking other people,
"Basma is right with the number that she gave me,"
really because it was not expected.
It was really not expected to have
these huge orders, and these huge orders come
at the worst time.
It was really help us a lot, our community,
it helped us to keep people in Bethlehem,
it helped us to give food and to give medicine
to our people, so yeah.
- Can you tell us a little bit about
what the global shutdowns did to artisan communities?
Yeah, it was really so bad.
In Bethlehem, that say, our community depends
from the tourism.
Bethlehem, we are in a tourism area
and since 2020, since March 2020,
all things are closed, the hotels are closed.
We have a souvenir shop which is also closed,
so the situation is really, really so bad.
In Bethlehem area, we depend 85% of our income
comes from the tourism, and 85% are artisans
who are doing this kind of work or hotels
that are open for the tourism, so the situation,
it really came so, so, so bad.
And yeah, it was really very difficult situation.
People, their workshops which were closed
and this order reopened many, many, many workshops.
And this order really it was blessed for our community.
People were so happy.
- There's been three Young Living orders that have
been placed, right? - Yes.
- [Melisa] Which are those orders?
- The first one, it was the blessed trees,
that it was 10,000 pieces.
- [Melisa] Last year's huh?
- [Basma] Yeah, and the second one,
it was the cutting boards
that it was also 10,000,
and the biggest one, which we are working now,
is the 100,000 pieces, yeah.
- [Melisa] The massage tool.
- The massage tool, yeah, yeah.
I would start to cry as each order came in,
as it provided us with a way to survive.
Young Living is the reason that we are still in Bethlehem,
you are the reasons that the families
have been able to stay and not to have to leave the country.
I am physically here, but I have a lot
of messages from our community there.
They don't have words to express the thing
that you are doing for our community in Bethlehem.
Really, it's huge thing, yeah.
Also with the income that we have been able to have
through the orders from the Young Living,
we were able to donate oxygen machines
to the women union in our area and also to help
some people in need.
- Basma, thank you so much for sharing your heart
with us, for representing so many people back home,
we just feel, like I said, so blessed
that we get to be in each other's lives.
- Yeah.
- To add onto what Basma just said,
I'm excited to announce that since our partnership
with Holy Land Handicraft, Young Living orders
have been able to provide 66,396 fair pay hours
to over 250 artisans, caring for over 1,000 dependents
combined all in Bethlehem.
Overall, from 2017 through September of 2021,
we've been able to provide 867,229 fair pay hours
and have provided work to over 10,000 artisans worldwide.
I hope hearing these numbers can help you understand
just how powerful your purchases are
and the difference that they can make
and are already making.
- Yeah.
- Well if you are interested in going
and purchasing some of these wonderful artisan items,
search YoungLiving.com, and you can find
any existing artisan items there,
and if you want to learn more
about the Young Living Foundation's
Developing Enterprise pillar,
be sure to visit YoungLivingFoundation.org.
We also have an amazing Meet the Artisan page
where you can find out more information
about the artisan groups and even read stories
about the individual artisans like Basma
that we have impacted.
Thank you again for joining us and as always,
thank you for your amazing support to the Foundation.
(calm music)