Question for ya… do you think you’d vote for me to go to Africa with a handful of amazing women who are writers, bloggers, artists, etc? I think this is up my ally. I’d love to go. So if you have a minute click here and go vote for me. Plus you get to see a video of Lamp and I talking about why I should go to Africa. Hugs!
I voted for you. Hope you win!
I voted for you and surely hope you win…LAMP is too cute in the video
OMG could Lamp be any cuter in that video. She makes my heart happy, too. P.S.Of course I voted for you.
Can we vote more than once for you? I already voted for you, but I really want you to get to go to Africa. I think it would be so cool. P.S. Can I watch your daughters while you are away? Jk, but I do live in Ohio. I would love to meet Lamp, PSP and new baby in person, but I do get that that's a little weird of me. Maybe I'll run into you at IKEA one day:)
Carrie–Ha! You never know, I have run into readers before, so it could happen! 🙂
Please don't align your blog with this garbage. This company has shady credentials and is listed as a multilevel marketing scam. The point of this trip is not to help Rwandans, but to
go and exploit them ("Tell their stories" – read: Use their lives as marketing tools for people to buy more jewelry) and then encourage more privileged Americans to buy overpriced jewelry at a markup these Rwandans do not get a fair percentage of. Do some research and I know you'll withdraw your entry. As someone who does so much good for the special needs community, please don't tarnish your reputation by jumping on this bandwagon without digging deep into what this company truly stands for. These women do not need their stories told so that more jewelry can be sold for Noonday.
Anon–Hi! So I can see where you're coming from and wanted to make sure this company isn't as terrible as you make them sound…but I can't find anything negative about them. Do you have a link, an article, or something you'd like to share? In one respect I get that "sharing their stories" can be used as a marketing tool in a negative sense, but it can also be used in a positive sense. They are a company, of course they want to sell their product. If they manage to do that AND help people in Rwanda at the same time (by giving them a fair wage for their amazing skills) I'm not sure I see it as exploiting them. However, I'm certainly open to what you said, I just can't find anything to back it up…so if you could send something for me to read I'd love to check it out. Thanks!
There were several blogs written by previous Noonday ambassadors, however since the negative attention garnered from Kelle Hampton's blog they have suspiciously been deleted completely. These blogs corroborated the notion of "poverty tourism" – one was a woman describing her trip and complaining about how dirty the conditions were, how her heels got ruined, accompanied by photos of local children whose names she did not know. I suggest you read the comments on Kelle's Noonday post, the bottom third address many valid questions and concerns about this company. The main problem is that they do not provide ANY details as to what constitutes a "livable wage" nor how this translates to sales of their jewelry. Because they refuse to give financial details and keep reiterating "livable wage", it appears that Noonday pays these artisans a fixed amount regardless of how much jewelry is sold or at what price. So think about it – sending bloggers to Rwanda to meet with an artisan (whose job description as a Noonday worker requires her to meet these bloggers) so that they can come home and "tell her story" and encourage people to buy more jewelry does not benefit this woman whose story is told. She does not decide the narrative. She is a genocide survivor whose story is diminished, exploited and peddled so that Noonday can create more "ambassadors" and sell more product. If you truly want to help these women and believe your presence, your face and camera in front of them, could do more good for them as human beings than a donation of the cost of a plane ticket, I encourage you to look into a more reputable charity who actually wants to help these women, and not use their lives and circumstances to endorse the sale of jewelry of which they do not get a fair share of the profit.
Start with the comment section on Kelle's post, and if you're still curious about how Noonday actually compensates these women I hope you have better luck finding out answers than the hundreds of others who have tried.
Just following up to say that I hope you had the chance to read some of the comments on Kelle's post – when I wrote my last message to you, there were 150 comments and commenting was closed. At this moment there are now 81 – every single comment calling into question Noonday's practices has been obliterated. Suspicious?