It's our birthday month and we're celebrating the first year of our shop in Tulsa. Each week during this month we'll be giving away a product from one of our partner organizations. This week, we're featuring JOYN. We discovered JOYN through a mutual friend who suggested we learn more about them and decide if their products might be a fit for our shop and its mission. Once we began to read the story of Melody Murray and her family, we knew that providing shoppers with these amazing products would be a perfect fit. An excerpt from the JOYN website helps tell the story:
In 1998, Melody and Dave Murray met and married at a small college in Arkansas. Two years later they spent their first summer as newlyweds working in an orphanage in Uganda with a shared passion to change the lives of people living in poverty. Fast forward ten years to 2010, Melody and Dave sold most of their belongings, packed a few bags and moved to Rajpur, India, with their two young sons.
They discovered talented artisans in Rajpur who made beautiful textile products, but lacked availability to markets. The Murrays and their team were determined to start a sustainable business and employ as many people as they possibly could.
JOYN's goal was that their first location be locally led and sustainable in five years. That goal was met, and now the local team in India is thriving and the business is self-sufficient. So the Murrays are in the process of moving to the Golden Triangle next month - the border of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, where they will be expanding the work of JOYN.
We are proud to sell JOYN products. They are high quality leather and block-print fabric. This week, JOYN is our featured partner, and we're giving away a bucket tote that is hand-spun, hand-woven and hand-block printed in the Himalayas.
The interior is fully lined with one interior pocket and the straps are vegan leather. This bag is one of our best-selling JOYN products, and the mustard stripe print is perfect for summer. You can enter the drawing this week by 1) signing up for our monthly newsletter on the homepage of the website, 2) stop in the shop and put your name in the Unity bowl, 3) comment on our Instagram post about this product (@risingvillage).
To learn more about JOYN and see why we are so excited to sell their products in our shop, watch the video, and then enter to win the bucket tote!
J