Giving Growth Jewelry

As the weeks get shorter till our project is finished, it is rewarding to look at everything we have accomplished throughout this school year. Emily and I have done a lot and though we most likely will not meet our money goal, we have worked really hard and am surprised how well we stayed on track and didn't wait until the last second to start working. Spreading the word was definitely the hardest point since our Instagram didn't work out very well, but we did become very successful at school, and even all the way in Colorado. Emily and I have agreed that we will keep selling them until we run out of supplies, and I have even considered to keep buying supplies and instead of giving 100% of the proceeds, using some of the money just to cover the expense of the beads and string. Through this process, I have learned a lot about the process of selling a product and have become very interested in the process.

This week Kenya and I are starting to wrap things up. we sadly have not met our goal yet we have made around $200 which is minorly disappointing but in all reality, some money going to a great cause is better than none. I think our main struggle is how incredibly busy we both are and the amount of stress we are under so it is difficult for us to meet our deadline. I have learned how much I love making a difference and this learning experience has been amazing. After our time is up we would like to continue working on meeting our goal because we believe it is important to work towards making a difference in this world. I am super excited to see what we could do with this in the future.If we were to do it again I would have loved to have gotten to start earlier that way we would have had more class time.  The necklace I am wearing here is one of my favorite.   

As selling our jewelry as become very common at school now that we have gotten our name out there, we have started to consider other ways we can spread our name around and start selling in other places than just our school. Mrs. Jaynes gave me the great idea to look into getting a  booth at the Supermarkets that happen often at the Factory. We are going to look into that idea some more, but their might be come complications with our age and maybe even needing a permit to set up a booth, but we will be begin finding more information. Another idea is just starting to build and promote our Instagram more. We do have one, but we haven't taken a ton of photos of our jewelry, so we have to ty to get those first and just grow from there. The most simple way is just to ask those who have purchased jewelry to promote and just spread by ear. Just this weekend I went to go to one of my friends play, and her theater friend from a different school asked me if she could buy a choker, just from h...

This week was Winter break and I was away in California which made it difficult to work on our project. So instead this week I looked in shops for ideas on how other people sell their product and whether it is effective or not. Some of the things I came upon is hands-on marketing, what I mean by this is there was this cute little shop and you could take scraps of leather and make bracelets for a discounted price. I thought this was the coolest idea because it was a hands-on experience and it still made them money. I thought that maybe if our project went beyond class and this year we could implement this into our work. While I was away Kenya worked on making more product. I learned that we work well together but it is also hard when one of us is away. so far I think we are on track to our goal which is super encouraging.

As Emily and I are beginning to sell, we have taken into consideration what are mentor has told us, and have now already raised over $120. Emily's friends from Colorado are starting to also purchase some chokers, along with alot of fellow FRA students. We have also started to put the orders in personalized bags with notes on them for each person that buys one. Since we are starting to get a higher demand for our products a challenge we have faced is just time management with creating the chokers and bracelets. We both have very busy lives, and now that we are selling quickly, we have to carve time out of our days to create jewelry, which can sometimes take awhile. We have both decided to work on jewelry everyday Genius Hour we can and that why it will be able to create time to make as much jewelry as we can. Though we are getting more busy in our selling, it is very fun to see friends and students wearing jewelry you've worked very hard on. I am very excited the great improveme...

This week Kenya and I met with our mentor and it was extremely impactful. She helped us with any questions we had, it was very nice to be able to talk to someone with experience in what we are trying to accomplish. Some of the questions we asked her where: What would be the ideal pricing we should do for our products? What is the most effective way to ship our products? What audience should we target our products to? What is your most popular piece of jewelry? How should we openly advertise our jewelry  What company should we partner with for providing education in impoverished communities? She had very insightful and helpful responses to most of our questions. I think the major set back we had this week as I was not able to take good pictures till Sunday which set back our calendar a bit. What I learned about myself this week was I sometimes procrastinate which I need to work on. Another thing that we accomplished this week was selling mult...

Now that we have made it more public about our jewelry, we have begun to sell our products! I have received some feedback from my friends about what colors and styles they like and what they would like to purchase. It is excited for Emily and me to start seeing these great improvements. While Emily is in Mexico, she is hoping to get some really good photos to post on our Instagrams that will better sell our jewelry. I think we have found a solid mentor that will be able to guide us through this project. Her name is Elizabeth Adams and she is one of my mom's good college friends who lives in Alabama and has her own jewelry business called Exvoto Vintage Jewelry. She has a shop in Nashville as well, but will not be in town the times we need to do an interview. She isn't 100% a non-profit but she does give a portion of her money away to an organization that furthers cancer studies since her daughter passed away from cancer. We are excited to do a Skype call soon when Emily comes b...

This week Kenya and I started to work on taking pictures of our Instagrams. We want to really start to spread the word and we believe through social media is the most effective way. On the other hand, we would love your advice on other equally effective ways to spread the word. Over the past week, I believe Kenya and I have grown to love our project, even more, I say this because with every passing moment all the work we have put in is starting to come full circle. Which is extremely encouraging just the thought of helping someone who is not as fortunate to have education makes our heart's smile. This week we also have been doing some research and have chosen to either go with, World Vision or Compassion although that could change as well, those are the most promising ones so far. This prosses is amazing and I'm so glad that Kenya and I have chosen to do this project although it can become difficult to get motivation at times we know that the en...

Throughout this week, Emily and I have made a lot of progressive in our project. We have both made a good amount of jewelry, and are ready to start selling. We have made a good price system, and worked out how to promote our items. Soon, we will have high quality photos of our jewelry, and spread them on our Instagram, and also on our Instagram page for our business. Some problems we have run into while creating our jewelry, is the best way to keep the jewelry to be the most withstanding and just overall last the longest. We are now starting to use special clasps to hold the knot from untying or possibly breaking. We have learned a lot from this project, both in a management way, and given us both a little passion for nosiness running and we are so excited to keep growing and by next week start selling.

Kenya and I's goal is to make 1400 dollars in order to send a girl in Kenya to school for all four years of high school. This week Kenya and I went to the store to purchase our supplies. we bought lot's of colors and some pendants to start the process of making our jewelry. Our next big step is to start to promote our product through our social media once we have some inventory. We are both extremely excited to start this next step in our business and to start to ship and sell things regularly. Our plan is to sell our jewelry for two pieces for ten dollars that way each one of us only has to make 140 different pieces and then all together we have to make around 280 to reach our goal. This is something Kenya and I are very passionate about and we are extremely thrilled to be sharing our progress with all of you guys thank you so much for your support in our journey.          ...

Emily and I wanted to create our Genius Hour, Giving Growth Jewelry, to give the amazing opportunity of an education to a young girl in Kenya. The reason we specifically chose Kenya as our directed area in Africa is that as it may seem ironic as my name is Kenya, my parents gave me the name because they hoped one day I would be a missionary and give to the less fortunate. Their missions trip there also impacted the name I was given. The way we want to raise the money for such as project is by creating jewelry, such as rings, bracelets, and necklaces, and taking those profits and giving it to an organization to give a girl an education. The reason we felt it so necessary to focus on the expansion of education is that both of us are very blessed to go to the school we do, and have seen the importance and worth that school can bring out in someone. We hope that just by starting out small, we can create something bigger.  

This project is something that Kenya and I are very passionate about, we are vert fortunate to be given the opportunity to make it come to life. Our project is creating jewelry then selling it to put towards tuition for a girl in Kenya to be able to go to high school. This week we started designing our Logo and we absolutely love how it turned out. Through the copious amounts of research we have done, we have learned that Education is a great way out of poverty and gives them confidence as well as gives them a higher chance of earning greater incomes and delays marriage and having kids. With a secondary education they tend to have more impactful voices in their communities and as a nice added bonus it gives them confidence. We want to transform a young girl’s life by sending her to secondary school though our donation of 1,400 dollars of which we will work to make. We have learned that we are both very hard workers and since we are both very passionate in this it is easy to get the wo...