What is the Unity Bead Challenge?
The Unity Bead Challenge is a contest to make the most creative, fashionable item using fair trade beads

Women in Africa and India make awesome beads from recycled bottles, magazines and other locally sourced materials. Supporting their handiwork, A Better Footprint buys pounds of these beads at fair trade prices.

The beads then travel to A Better Footprint and beads get mixed and matched into challenging Unity Bead Contest Kits, which go on sale at various locations each year from May-July. Creative people in America then get their hands on a kit, and make something wonderful from the unity beads in it.

By the end of the summer (mid-August), contestants turn in their entries and get the chance to win the title of Unity Bead Challenge Winner (did we mention there are prizes?).

After the entries are judged, all creations are put up for a charity auction in September with the proceeds revolving back into A Better Footprint's fair trade mission, to restore dignity to the world's poor.

So even though it's a contest, you could really say everyone wins.

The Inspiration For The Contest
Every day, hundreds of beads are traded on the global market.  While many beads are mass-produced in low-wage third world factories, the growing Fair Trade movement is changing that trend—and the lives of poor African beadmakers, used to living on less than $2 per day.  These Africans, many of whom are women, aim to lift themselves from poverty through fair trade, and are simultaneously caring for the environment by using natural or recycled materials to create fresh new designs for the bead industry.  Will you join this movement of unity and create something great using African Fair Trade Beads?

The Purpose of the Contest
The 2009 “Unity Bead Challenge” is a project with three aims: 
1) To assist impoverished fair trade beadmakers from Africa and promote their handmade, eco-friendly beads, 
2) To inspire and challenge local adults and youth as they create unique pieces of jewelry from ethically sourced and created eco-friendly/fair trade beads, and 
3) To raise funds for the Boys and Girls Club of Green Bay Youth For Unity Program, which helps area kids embrace diversity and engage in multicultural projects that help unify our world. 

Visit our new Unity Bead Challenge SITE at unitybeadchallenge.wordpress.com

Visit our Flickr Photostream to see photos of some of the entries from the 2009 Unity Bead Challenge!