"Candlemaker aims to help impoverished women" by Sarah Shemkus | Globe Correspondent, May 11, 2013
Moo Kho Paw fled the violence and oppression of Myanmar for a refugee camp in Thailand nearly a decade ago. Five years later, she, her husband, and their baby daughter resettled again, this time landing in Springfield.
As she adapted to her new home, Paw started looking for a job to help support her family, which was about to get even larger with the addition of twins. That’s when she learned about Prosperity Candle, the Easthampton company where she has now worked for three years.
“I love the job,” Paw said. “It helps me to pay the rent, to buy the baby diapers.”
That’s precisely what Ted Barber, 46, hoped for when he and partner Amber Chand founded Prosperity Candle in 2010. The company sells a line of handmade candles poured into colorful, recyclable containers. But sales are only part of its mission — the company say its real goal is to help women in and from developing countries by teaching them new skills and creating jobs.
“We are very much focused on families escaping poverty through women’s entrepreneurship,” Barber said.
Their efforts thus far have included training women in Iraq to make candles and run small businesses. A similar candlemaking program in Haiti is on the horizon.
In Easthampton, the company employs refugees such as Paw to make and package candles and fulfill orders. Currently, up to four refugees are working there at any given time, though Barber expects to hire more as the business expands.
Refugees “don’t always get the best opportunities,” he said, “so we like to counter that here.”
Don't worry; they will be if the jobs replacement bill known as immigration reform passes.
The company has been “an absolute blessing” for the refugee community in Western Massachusetts, particularly for those women who have never before worked outside the home, according to Jozefina Lantz, director of services for new Americans at Lutheran Social Services. The agency, which has an office in Springfield, helped connect refugees with jobs at Prosperity Candle.
Don't you wish you had someone like that looking out for you, average American?
It's not that I want these women to suffer, but when you see the wealth inequality, the outrageous level of corporate profits these days, who actually is getting or going to get the jobs, and how this government only functions for corporations, well....
The idea for an enterprise like Prosperity Candle first occurred to Barber when he was working in Africa, helping entrepreneurs build small businesses. Barber said that during a trip to Rwanda he had a sobering realization: There was little opportunity for the businesses he was helping to grow....
The idea of using business enterprises to benefit poverty-stricken people in the developing world has become a mainstream concept....
And when it becomes that you wanna steer clear. Private central banking is a mainstream concept. War is a mainstream concept. Global fart mist is a mainstream concept.
Siiri Morley, 34, a partner in the company. “The production itself is what is creating the change.”
Very Gandhi like, but....
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About 30 percent of the company’s revenue comes from online sales, Barber said. The remaining 70 percent is generated through sales of candles to corporate partners who give them out as favors at events or to clients and employees....
(Blog editor's chin drops to chest when he realizes this promotion piece is being pimped by the bu$ine$$ section of my corporate pre$$. No matter what the issue or item they always have an agenda-pu$hing angle)
Aziza Ansari, of Palo Alto, Calif., is typical of Prosperity Candle’s regular online customers — she is attracted to the products and the cause. Last week, she ordered a candle as a Mother’s Day present, in part because she knows her mother will appreciate what the company is doing.
Oh, Globe trying to get you to buy a gift?
This year, the company started Prosperity Catalyst, a nonprofit arm that is taking over the training and mentoring of new candlemakers.
Related:
"nonprofit[s] provide new ways for corporations and individuals to influence"
It's an elite and corporate paper, and now I know why they love nonprofits.
This group, headed by Morley, is starting up a candlemaking operation in Haiti modeled after the Iraq pilot program. The original for-profit business will continue to handle marketing and distribution of candles.
As the company continues to expand, Morley said, she is becoming increasingly optimistic about the chances of having an impact on impoverished communities worldwide.
“When women are empowered in any way, the ripple effect is tremendous,” she said.
Don't you mean trickle down?
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I'm not saying women should be oppressed; however, I'm tired of agenda-pu$hing slop coming from my corporate war paper, which seems to have no problem when it comes to raining drone missiles on womens' heads.
Related:
"Yankee Candle is said to be for sale" by Chris Reidy | Globe Staff, March 13, 2013
Yankee Candle Co., the country’s largest maker of scented candles, is reportedly being prepared for a sale, about seven years after the South Deerfield company was purchased for $1.6 billion by a private equity firm.
Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago buyout firm, is working with Barclays and Bank of America Merrill Lynch on a sale process that is still in the early stages, according to a report published Tuesday by Reuters, which cited anonymous sources.
Officials at Yankee Candle and Madison Dearborn declined to comment.
The company reported that its net sales increased 7.4 percent in 2012, to about $844.2 million.
Yeah, but did they turn a profit?
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Uh-oh. This county and region are about to take a huge hit.
Yankee Candle about to be Bained. One clear sign is I never see any advertisements for temp jobs there anymore when they were once on of the few job postings in the local paper. Not anymore.
