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Paper to Pearls is an initiative of Voices for Global Change — a not-for-profit founded on the belief that when people who have had no voice, speak, they change their world. Through Paper to Pearls, Voices is committed to providing micro-enterprise support to women in the internal refugee camps of northern Uganda, enabling them to recreate their lives and build a sustainable future...

Paper to Pearls was launched in December of 2005, after Voices for Global Change president, Barbara Moller, came back from an assignment in northern Uganda with paper bead necklaces in her luggage and a dream about helping the women in the area's internal refugee camps. The initiative began with 40 beaders, and currently supports 250, ranging in age from 21 to 64. Most care for a number of children, their own and many who have been orphaned. They use the income they receive first to buy food, medicines and school uniforms and supplies and to pay school fees. Then they will buy blankets, better mattresses for their small huts, a cell phone, an essential mode of communication in Africa. They also recieve something they can't buy: enhanced status within families and communities, confidence and dignity and the ability to be self-reliant again.