Poverty and Scrunchies?

Welcome to our brand new page! Bienvenue :)

We are so excited to be "opening" our doors to the world for the first time. It's been a long time coming (ahem... two years), and we couldn't have done it without all of your support.

For this first post, I'll keep it short.

Basically, when you shop Teranga Market, you support a momma in Senegal, West Africa. And not just any momma, but my best friend of 11 years, whom I've seen struggle the entire time I've known her with being stuck in the cycle of poverty* without so much as a single complaint.

Years later, when she got married and had two beautiful little boys, life was really becoming untenable with 60 hour workweeks that amounted to less than 75 cents per hour for her. And with her mom sick in another country for medical treatment, she had nobody to watch baby number two that was then on the way.

So, during a 48 work trip, I thought... let's uhhh, do something about this?

Long story short, someone was probably not paid nearly enough to hoist a huge, professional grade sewing machine up a flight of stairs to Anne-Marie's apartment, taking up precious space, but which she would use to teach herself everything she knows and allow her to:

1) stay home with her kids

2) choose her hours

3) have medical and other benefits

4) send her kids to the best school, a KEY to ending the cycle of poverty in her family.

In any family, really. But anyways...

Everything on this site is made by Anne-Marie, and 100% of your dollars go to supporting all of the above.

As for me? I'm just blundering my way through this, trying to figure out how to say "zippers" and "import taxes" in French and generally just making it up as I go along to try and help my friend. I'm learning as I go, and I want to get good at this, because that means getting to help even more moms one day.

So, I hope you'll let us know how we're doing and how we can be better. And I hope you'll tag along for the journey and enjoy a blog post now and again, especially because a couple of books (a memoir + children's books) are on the horizon, and I'd love hear your questions and input.

Welp, this has been a paralyzing task of breaking through perfectionism and fear, and I gotta say, it feels kind of fantastic to be at this point now!

Thank you so much for being here.

Merci & jerrejef-y,

Katie

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*stories and any personal information always shared with permission