After hear­ing about Pamba Toto’s work in Kenya through a per­sonal con­nec­tion in the small town of Sheri­dan, WY, we were anx­ious to intro­duce our­selves to Deb­bie and Colleen! We are now excited to call Pamba Toto a part of the BB fam­ily, and are even more excited to share their story!

Tell us about the his­tory of Pamba Toto.

Deb­bie and I (Colleen) have never been the same after a few short weeks in 2002. Deb­bie Lee and her hus­band Brian are long-time direc­tors of the Inter­Var­sity Global Project to Kenya; and in the sum­mer of 2002, I joined them and led a team of six col­lege and two high school stu­dents in serv­ing at the Mother Teresa Home for Aban­doned Chil­dren in Nairobi as part of the project. The year before, my hus­band Dave and I adopted our son from the same orphan­age. We wanted them to wit­ness both the hor­ror of poverty that scarred our hearts for­ever when we claimed our son, and also the mys­tery of the Mother Teresa sis­ters, serv­ing in des­ti­tu­tion with unri­valed joy.

Our friend­ship deep­ened along with our pas­sion for the orphaned chil­dren of Kenya. We were primed and ready to do any­thing we could to help when one of our clos­est mutual friends, Mama Karau, expressed a dream in 2005 to open a small home for orphans. Hope’s Promise, a Colorado-based non-profit, agreed to over­see the home and hired Pas­tor and Mama Karau as house-parents and Coun­try Coordinators.

Deb­bie and I and our fam­i­lies spread the vision far and wide amongst our net­work; and fund­ing accu­mu­lated. Still, we searched for ideas for how we could per­son­ally gen­er­ate money to open and sus­tain the home. As an artist, I most longed to invest my cre­ative skills. Unbe­knownst to Deb­bie, I began to dream of mak­ing jew­elry to raise money for SoH. Deb­bie called me soon after the idea came to me, in early 2006. Deb­bie explained that she had decided to sell jew­elry to raise money for SoH. “Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked me.On the other end of the line, in dis­be­lief, my heart rate accel­er­ated, “Well, do you think I’m crazy, because I’ve just decided to make jew­elry for the same reason?!”

Deb­bie and I are still in awe that simul­ta­ne­ously and inde­pen­dently of one another, we received a vision to make and sell jew­elry to raise aware­ness and funds for SoH. We started out just sell­ing what I could make, but soon real­ized we could also gen­er­ate eco­nomic devel­op­ment in Kenya by stock­ing items made by Kenyan artisans.

We feel like we are hang­ing on to God’s coat tails as He expands the mis­sion. Pamba Toto now encom­passes var­i­ous “lines” of jew­elry and home prod­ucts, includ­ing the pieces that I design and make, as well as crafts and jew­elry made by women in Nairobi slums, and projects cre­ated by the twenty-four* Sanc­tu­ary of Hope chil­dren them­selves. We’re on a steep learn­ing curve con­cern­ing mar­ket­ing, con­sumer pref­er­ences, how to empower Kenyan crafts-people, how to send mobile “stores” to vol­un­teer sell­ers, etc. But through it all, our goal remains the same: to raise aware­ness and max­i­mize prof­its so that we can donate as much as pos­si­ble for the ben­e­fit of some of our favorite kids in the world!

What are some of the tri­als and tri­umphs you have faced in bring­ing your orga­ni­za­tion to where it is today?

One of our most fun projects was imple­mented for a women’s half-marathon in Col­orado. This par­tic­u­lar project illus­trates well our gen­eral tri­als and tri­umphs – we expe­ri­enced great joy in train­ing and pay­ing the women to do the work and in gen­er­at­ing funds for Sanc­tu­ary of Hope. We nav­i­gated issues of how to obtain sup­plies, cal­cu­lat­ing fair wages for the women; qual­ity con­trol pro­ce­dures; com­mu­ni­ca­tion from half-a-world away; and tim­ing from when an order is placed, to pro­duc­tion on another con­ti­nent, to deliv­ery in the US. While joy­ful and a won­der­ful learn­ing oppor­tu­nity for us and for the women, the project leaves us with a remain­ing trial – cre­at­ing demand and sus­tain­abil­ity so that the women always have pro­duc­tive projects in the pipe-line.

A recent “tri­umph project” is the “SoH Heart Paint­ing.” Penny Tay­lor, a good friend of Pamba Toto, served with a Hope’s Promise Short Term Mis­sion team in Kenya last year. We sent her over with paint and can­vas, and she worked with each SoH child to paint a heart in a sec­tion of the paint­ing. She chris­tened the art­work “Many Hearts, One Fam­ily.” As Pamba Toto sells fine art giclee prints of the piece, prof­its return to directly ben­e­fit the young artists!

One of our BB work­ers came across this paint­ing in a church in Sheri­dan,WY last week, and imme­di­ately rec­og­nized it as Pamba’s.  What a joy it is to see the work of the Lord spread­ing world wide — from Kenya to Wyoming!

How have you seen God pro­vide for Pamba Toto?

Before Pamba Toto or SoH began, in 2005 I spent 7 ½ months in Kenya adopt­ing our daugh­ter from the Mother Teresa orphan­age. Near the end of my sojourn, a dear mutual friend of mine and Debbie’s, Mama Karau, told me about a very ill mem­ber of Math­are Wor­ship Cen­tre, the church she and her hus­band pio­neered in the sec­ond largest slum in Nairobi. The woman, HIV+, begged Mama Karau to take care of her twin babies when she died.

Mama Karau and I and Deb­bie began to dream together of a vision Mama had car­ried close toher heart for many years, a small home for orphans. I spoke with the Direc­tor of Hope’s Promise, the adop­tion agency which helped us adopt our
Kenyan chil­dren and also oper­ates small fam­ily homes for orphans around the world; and the orga­ni­za­tion agreed to open an orphan care min­istry in Kenya. Then, in 2008, in an unbe­liev­able mir­a­cle, a church con­tacted Hope’s Promise out-of-the-blue. They con­nected through friends of friends to a man who once trav­eled to Kenya with Brian and Deb­bie. Unbe­knownst to Brian and Deb­bie, the church formed rela­tion­ships in Kenya based on the man’s refer­ral; and, while serv­ing in Kenya in other capac­i­ties, a team hap­pened to visit Sanc­tu­ary of Hope. They were so moved by the love of the SoH fam­ily that they decided to track down Hope’s Promise and ask if they could fund the open­ing and one year of oper­a­tions for a sec­ond home!

As an orga­ni­za­tion, what are you most excited about right now?

We are incred­i­bly grate­ful for a group of stu­dents at the Rocky Moun­tain Col­lege of Mon­tana who are involved with Enac­tus and chose Pamba Toto as the recip­i­ents of their efforts. Enac­tus is “an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion that con­nects stu­dents, aca­d­e­mic and busi­ness lead­ers through entrepreneurial-based projects that empower peo­ple to trans­form oppor­tu­ni­ties into real, sus­tain­able progress for them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties.” The stu­dents wrote a busi­ness plan for Pamba Toto and secured grants through The Coca Cola Foundation’s Uncap Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Women and Sam’s Club Step Up for Small Busi­ness. These funds pro­vided much needed Quick-books and train­ing as well as an I-Pad and Square Cube.

We can’t wait to see what the future holds for you! What are some of your hopes and goals for 2015?

Last year, we part­nered with the Texas PTA to pro­vide $7000 of pre-purchased inven­tory for a con­fer­ence. We would love to see these types of oppor­tu­ni­ties expand as more peo­ple hear about our prod­ucts and the min­istry we sup­port. A huge step for­ward toward this goal and also toward empow­er­ing more vol­un­teer sell­ers is work­ing with Enac­tus to set up Quick-books.

We are also excited about a cou­ple key Kenyan women who are rais­ing up arti­san co-ops for women in slums. We hope to increas­ingly bring prod­ucts from these co-ops to mar­ket through Pamba Toto, thereby gen­er­at­ing eco­nomic devel­op­ment and indi­rectly eas­ing the orphan prob­lem as women are able to remain healthy and ade­quately pro­vide for their children.

Ulti­mately, we want to increase our dona­tions steadily so that fund­ing for the two exist­ing homes sta­bi­lizes and a third (and more) homes can be opened.

Want to know how you can help?

Click here to shop Pamba Toto now on Bought Beau­ti­fully!

Shortly after writ­ing this blog, we heard about the loss of 147 Chris­t­ian stu­dents in Kenya, who had been sin­gled out and killed because of their faith. In the midst of such tragedy, we were com­forted by the words of Colleen’s open let­ter to the ter­ror­ists who com­mit­ted the crime. Read her let­ter here, and join us in pray­ing for the Kenyan com­mu­ni­ties who have been so trag­i­cally affected by this event.