Mend Bags

Mend bags are a product from Invisible Children, a non-profit organization that works to aid war-torn northern Uganda.

Invisible Children started as a documentary, showing how children in Uganda were victims and weapons in a civil war, being kidnapped and forced to become soldiers. They began selling products to raise awareness and send money to those in need.

Mend bags are made by women who were former abductees of the Lord's Resistance Army, a religious and military group in Sudan and Uganda known for rampant murder, abduction, mutilation and sexual enslavement.

You can buy a Mend bag and know the woman who made it was paid fairly. The name of the woman who created the is sewn into it. You can go online and see her profile, with photos and videos. It lets you connect to the fashion you consume. You can buy a bag at the Invisible Children store here.

Books for Africa

Books for Africa (BFA) has a simple mission: to end the book famine in Africa.

War, economic crises, and poverty plague many areas of Africa, and stop children from attending school and getting an education.  According to UNICEF, every third child in Sub-Saharan Africa alone doesn’t have the opportunity to go to school.

The children who are able to go to school often have to share textbooks with 10-20 other students, and most ever never owned a book of their own.

BFA believes educating the younger generation is one of the only ways to end the cycle of poverty in war in Africa. They supply boxes of books to rural libraries, orphanages, community centers and adult literacy programs.

One way they raise money for books (besides donations) is selling t shirts through Out of Print Clothing.  The shirts are printed with classic book covers like Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Catch-22 or other English class favorites.

The sale of one shirt sends one book to Africa through BFA. They have been donating 50 cents per every $28 shirt, which doesn’t seem like much, but the sales have already sponsored an entire shipment of books to Tanzania.

You can learn more about this organization or buy their products here.

The Generous Shopper

We vote for what kind of world we want every time we open our wallets. When we buy products that benefit charities or pay fair wages, we say we want to support that. But when we buy products made in sweatshops or with slave labor, we are saying those things are okay too.

Obviously, they aren’t.

It’s not that people want to willingly support these things; it’s just that they don’t know. Nobody’s telling consumers where their shirt was made, whether or not the person who sold it to them is being paid fairly or where their money goes after they bought it.

This blog will provide information necessary to turn an ordinary consumer into a generous shopper. It will highlight organizations that donate all proceeds from merchandise to support charities.

Who am I?

Well, I’m Emily. I’m a college student from Indiana. I love shopping and I love seeing how to change buying habits to make other people’s lives better. I’ll do all the research so you don’t have to. All you have to do is decide to use your wallet to make the world a better place.