Investing in Lives

Jalia, 50, who cares for her husband’s 28 children – 13 by her and 15 by his two other wives – uses the wages she’s earned weaving baskets for American markets to start a thriving chicken farm and egg business to help feed her brood.

With his weaving money, Nyaaba, 16, a jobless orphan in Ghana, begins to farm a fallow family plot and buys a goat to save himself from starvation. He also enrolls in school, a first for him, and buys a bike to get to and from school.

Sarah, a 67-year-old Ugandan grandmother, wrests herself from destitution by starting a pastry-baking business with her new Blessing Basket earnings.

These and scores of other entrepreneurs are being created in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, as well as in Ghana and Uganda, thanks to seed money earned through a new nonprofit startup company using services of the University’s Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

The Blessing Basket Project® pays weavers in underdeveloped countries a “prosperity wage,” which is several times the local average, for unique, high-quality baskets it now markets in 48 retail outlets in 14 states and a Canadian province.

“And we’re picking up more retailers every day,” says company founder Theresa Wilson.

Wilson conceived of “blessing baskets” a few years ago when, during a personal crisis, friends began sending her notes of encouragement, which she collected in a basket. “They were blessings,” she says, that comforted and inspired her. That led to her idea to create blessing baskets for others.

Via the Internet, she sought weavers in high-poverty U.S. locales, so as to spread the blessings to the weavers as well. But she found her greatest response coming from far-flung outposts in Asia and Africa.

With the help of her husband, Bryan, and $8,000 of their own money, she began to pay high wages to Third World weavers, import baskets, and market them through their Web site, www.blessingbasket.org. But then Wilson learned of entrepreneurship programs at the University’s Olin School of Business and met Kenneth A. Harrington, director of the Skandalaris Center, which, each fall, sponsors the Olin Cup competition for startup companies.

With the aid of five University business students, Wilson developed a business plan that, in December 2004, won second place in the competition and a $20,000 loan in seed money. That was followed by a $200,000 donation from Noble International Chairman Robert J. Skandalaris, for whom the center is named.

Harrington says The Blessing Basket Project® epitomizes a new, innovative brand of social entrepreneurship.

“It’s unique because it’s a not-for-profit venture that doesn’t rely on continuing grants. It has become self-sustaining,” says Harrington. “This entrepreneurism is not about making money but effecting change. Theresa and her husband brought small resources but are having huge impact and return on investment in social terms.”

Wilson says The Blessing Basket Project® would not have had such an impact without the guidance and support of the University. “Washington University has been a tremendous help,” she says. “And alumni are some of our best customers.”

With that help, sales have been climbing. In a recent month they sold 1,300 baskets, at prices ranging from $25 to $45 – which means more money traveling to weavers on the far side of the globe.

“So many entrepreneurs are being created around the world because of The Blessing Basket Project, ®” says Wilson. “People are using that income to invest in their lives.”

People like Jalia, who sends from Uganda an offering for Theresa Wilson’s basket: “May the almighty God bless our friends in America.”

Article courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis Annual Report 2004-05

Find out more about Baskets of Blessings at http://blessingbasket.org/

How to Contact the Skandalaris Family Foundation