Building bakeries and transforming lives through the power of work.
flourFLOWER exists to build bakeries in Rwanda in order to feed and give work to those facing fragile food supply and economic instability. We believe that creating things of beauty produces joy for both maker and receiver and elevates the human experience. Our line of artisanal products has been designed for that end.
We work with teams on the ground who teach young men and women how to bake bread and run a bakery. We ensure that they are taught proper food handling, preparation, baking, packaging and delivery. Approximately twenty to thirty people work full or part-time in each bakery. Producing more than one million pieces of bread per year per bakery, each one feeds approximately 39,000 people each week, including 5,000 children.
By recycling the flour sacks used at the bakeries, and teaching skilled, trained artisans how to turn them into things of beauty, each bakery increases its likelihood of becoming self-sustainable, as does each sewer. Your purchase of one of our decorative flour totes had a direct impact on 700 lives. And more.
We also teach women how to hand-sculpt clay into miniature works of art, each one. They learn about color, and proportion. And about quality. We teach them how to string these hand-sculpted beads onto bracelets.
We believe that teaching work skills leads to self-confidence and self-reliance in its creators. And that designing, creating and receiving beauty elevates the human spirit.
We thought: what if we recycle these discarded flour bags and retrofit them into something beautiful that we could sell in order to buy more flour, feed more people and ultimately, build more bakeries and feed and employ more people?
The idea of one bag feeding 700 people stirred our souls. Not buy one, feed one. Buy one bag and you feed 700 people! And not only that, but for every bakery built, tens of thousands of people are fed and dozens more are employed. It was a business model worth fighting for. flourFLOWER was born after we learned that each bag of bakery flour fed 700 people.
The idea that giving work is the best approach to ending poverty led us to look at ways in which we could best employ people with steady work in communities where work was needed most. Retrofitting flour sacks would keep women working. Making soft bags out of gorgeous African fabrics would, too. So would beading. We added these products to the mix. We are fanatical about quality, and the importance of training for excellence became baked into our corporate DNA.
FlourFLOWER exists to feed and give work to people in Rwanda. And to elevate the human experience by hand-crafting things of beauty.
