The Paper to Pearls initiative has two significant aspects. The income from necklace sales enables families to buy additional food and medicines and to pay school fees for their children. But we didn’t want to stop there. We also wanted to provide a means to transform lives from ones of dependence to independence, to help foster the skills that individuals and families could use to remake their lives while they are in the camps and provide stability and security once they are able to return to their homes. Thus, through Paper to Pearls, Voices for Global Change launched a program designed to provide our beaders with an even greater measure of dignity and self-sufficiency. We call it the “New Horizons Program", and its purpose is to provide the education and training that will be most beneficial in enabling them to create new lives and to play a role in the eventual renewal of northern Uganda.

Using a large percentage of the net revenues wereceivefrom necklace sales and from your donations, we conduct training projects that range from initial training in beading skills to "refresher" training to refine those skills and training in basic savings and cash managementthat the beaders use to stabilize the income they receive from our purchase of their beads.

During 2009 we will establish a recognition program to bring attention to the consistent quality improvements shown by so many of our beaders. For people without a craft tradition, learning to create a handicraft that requires attention to detail and learning what "quality" means has been a challenge. Our beaders have demonstrated not only the willingness to learn but also an innate creativity that is enabling us to broaden and expand our inventory in unexpected ways. Our beaders smile with pride when we tell them they are creating the most beautiful paper bead jewelry in all of Uganda!