This just reminded me so much of my Cricket cat.

I have my business up and running!  I decided to name my needlework business Hands of Hope Needlework.  I decided on that title after reading about an organization called Girl Child Network Worldwide.  It was started by Betty Makoni  in Zimbabwe in 1998. She and 10 high school girls established a girls club in a local high school to combat the kind of terrible sexual abuse that Betty herself had undergone and that many girls were enduring from teachers, relatives, and even, officials. They marched across the country; they organized campaigns to teach girls their rights; they built empowerment villages to enable abused girls to heal and support each other.  One of the immense problems faced by girls in many of the African countries is AIDS.  The witch doctors propagate the myth that if a man with AIDS has sex with a virgin, he will be healed.  Men rape young girls and even infants trying to be cured.  Unfortunately, the girls not only suffer the stigma and trauma of being raped, but are often given the diseases, impregnated, or physically damaged.

I decided that as a victem of rape myself, I wanted to do something for these girls who have so little -- so often going without education, medical treatment, social or legal aide.  With this in mind, 15% of any profit I make with this business will go directly to this organization.  I would also like to start something here in the states, locally, to teach girls how to do needlework.  This may sound silly, but I feel that being able to do something creative, to make something beautiful, builds inner strength.  The arts (music, painting, crafting, etc.) can help student learning in all aspects of life. Student engagement and persistence improve with an arts-based curriculum;high-risk students particularly benefit. The arts foster an understanding of people and other cultures, and can prepare students for finding jobs.  Success creates confidence, and confidence creates more success.

According to Getty Education Institute for the Arts, Los Angeles, CA. 1996. Business leaders are realizing that arts education helps to prepare young people for the workplace, acknowledging that arts education develops collaborative skills, technological competencies, flexible thinking, and an appreciation for diversity. Aside from its specific content, arts education contributes to the quality of education overall and fosters critical thinking skills, develops valuable work force skills, builds values that connect children to themselves and to their cultures, and produces citizens and workers who are comfortable using many different symbol systems (verbal, mathematical, visual, auditory).

All of this brought me to my business slogan Using our hands to enrich the lives of others.

So far, I only have one product for sale, but I am finishing up the samples and instructions for a blackwork bookmark and am in the sketching phase of a thrid one.  I want that one to be representative of the girl child organization.

This is a poem that I learned in 4th grade...so many years ago.  I had a random thought of it and searched for it.  Here it is:

Catalogue

Cats sleep fat and walk thin. Cats, when they sleep, slump; When they walk, pull in-- And where the plump's been, there's skin. Cats walk thin.

Cats wait in a lump. Jump in a streak. Cats, when they jump, are sleek As a grape slipping its skin--They have technique. Oh, cats don't creak. They sneak. Cats sleep fat. They spread comfort beneath them Like a good mat, As if they picked the place And then sat. You walk around one As if he were the City Hall after that.

If male, A cat is apt to sing upon a major scale: This concert is for everybody, this Is wholesale. For a baton, he wields a tail. (He is also found, When happy, to resound With an enclosed and private sound.) A cat condenses. He pulls in his tail to go under bridges, And himself to go under fences. Cats fit in any size box or kit; And if a large pumpkin grew under one, He could arch over it.

When everyone else is just ready to go out, The cat is just ready to come in. He's not where he's been. Cats sleep fat and walk thin. --Rosalie Moore (B. 1910)