For the past two years one of our core programs has been our Destiny Program in Kolkata, India. The survivors at Destiny have created a great sewing program and has helped us proved that the survivors can live, work, and thrive out of the shelters, completing their path to freedom.
Over the last several years, Made By Survivors customers have loved the Destiny bags, but our customers are also increasing their jewelry purchases. Our goal is to maximize the number of survivors we employ, and while we will continue to expand our sewing programs, we see a great future in jewelry.
So we decided to create a new jewelry program in India, the first phase of which we are calling Destiny Jewelry. This is not going to be simple beaded jewelry. We want to teach the survivors the higher value skills like metalsmithing so they can create and design a whole collection of jewelry for a wide variety of tastes and price ranges.
This program is much more than just a new, small and local center. Over the next few years we hope to employ at least 500 survivors across many locations throughout India. The Destiny Jewelry Center, when complete, will be both a production center, and a training center that we can use to train survivors to themselves become jewelry trainers. We will also be teaching all the business, and social work skills to the survivors so that as we expand the program, the core staff can themselves be survivors.
As we build the program, we are going to share everything we learn, our successes and our mistakes in this "Dust To Dazzle" blog. We are often asked by our customers "How do you do your work - How do you help the survivors become independent?" We have a lot of information on this website about our program, but there will be no better way for us to share our work than by including you in it from the beginning. We hope not only to share our experiences, but also to build a community of supporters and volunteers who can help us build and expand this program.
We have been fortunate to receive funding to start this program from Singgod Foundation - we could not have done it without them! From the beginning, this program has been guided by the US jeweler Melisa Tyson, and we will be talking a lot more about her work in future posts.