The HIV epidemic has taken its toll on Uganda, causing tens of thousands of AIDS-related deaths each year. Those left behind often struggle to survive: widows suffering from HIV, newly single mothers with no job skills or education, and orphaned teens trying to provide for their siblings. Longing to bring healing and wholeness to their community, two entrepreneurial women created a business to employ their fellow widows. Within a few years, nearly eighty women were gathering daily to study, enjoy fellowship, and craft jewelry from beads made out of recycled magazine pages. With a new sense of emotional and financial empowerment, these widows soon began caring for orphans in their own neighborhoods, expanding their circles of protection to the “least of these” in their community.

As the program grew to serve more families, its founders sought ways to create more jobs. Discovering a rising market for jewelry and buttons made from cow horns, they conceived of a co-op that would employ not just widows but their family members and older orphans as well. With assistance from WAR, Int’l, the new workshop became a reality. Together, the magazine bead and cow horn enterprises continue to provide stability and sustainability for this now-thriving community.