Blog #14- Spotlight on Purpose Brand

Blog #14-

Spotlight on Purpose Brand

It’s a 150 billion dollar per year industry, meaning its profits are greater than Google, Starbucks, and Nike combined. It’s also the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world, second only to drugs. Of its victims, 71% are female, the men are typically used for labor purposes, and 20.1 million people total are trapped in that branch, whereas 4.8 million end up in a much, much worse situation. 

What am I talking about? The disgusting, destructive industry of human trafficking. 

Issues such as mass displacements, conflicts, violence, extreme poverty, lack of education, and little access to job opportunities put people at greater risk of falling prey to human traffickers. Perpetrators make victims dependent on them, exploiting that, and unbelievably, intimate partners are the ones who usually “recruit” those for sex trafficking, while family members and so-called friends are more likely to exploit someone for labor trafficking. Sadly, this has all proven difficult to end or even prevent. The demand for cheap goods encourages companies to exploit those at the bottom for labor trafficking, and the profoundly disturbing demand for sex with boys, girls, young men, and young women drives sex trafficking. It’s all a low cost/high profit industry as a human being can be “used” repeatedly as a “good,” so traffickers see it as a low risk/high reward gamble.

While it all sounds like the kind of tragedy we’ll never get a proper handle on, change starts one person at a time.

Enter Purpose. A nonprofit organization that was founded in 2007 by Stephanie Pollaro and Wendy Dailey who had witnessed firsthand the horrors of trafficking, they saw a need for a safety net between those who rescue people from trafficking and the victims re-entering society. Pollaro worked with women in Mumbai, India, teaching survivors to craft jewelry, while Dailey taught the rest of the world about trafficking, selling the survivors’ goods, and growing their nonprofit from Orange County, California. 

Almost fifteen years later, they have International Sanctuaries in Orange County; Mumbai; Tijuana, Mexico; Kampala, Uganda; and Cebu in the Philippines. 

Their mission is to empower girls and young women who are escaping trafficking to realize their true worth and identity by giving them dignity, hope, and freedom. While at the sanctuaries, the women are provided with income, holistic healthcare, education, and community through learning craftsmanship as well as soft skills and financial planning. They have a place where they belong, to love and be loved, to feel safe finally, to heal and grow, where the staff are trauma-informed. 

The wares that come out of the Purpose brand are handcrafted, processed, hand-signed, packaged, inventoried, and shipped 100% by trafficking survivors. So it’s about helping, NOT handouts. For example, in 2019-2020, they employed 179 rescued women. 

Via their website, https://www.purposejewelry.org/, you can donate . Employers can match individuals’ donations. There is an affiliate program for influencers, bloggers, magazines, etc. called Share-A-Sale. There are brick-and-mortar stores across the country that carry their products, such as ours here at Remedy Road. And 100% of Purpose’s proceeds go directly to the survivors employed there. 

Below, you can see some of my favorites that we feature in-house, including year-round staples such as 4 different styles of statement earrings (which incidentally are very “in” this season) in addition to 2 ornaments that are versatile enough to be used even when it’s no longer X-mas-