“I Am” a cocoa farmer, a gold miner, a chocolate maker, a jeweler. “I Am” a person with a name, a family, a rich history and a vision for a better, more equitable world. “I Am” a woman and part of a movement to empower other women to build peace and resilience in our communities. “I Am” not a label or your typical multinational brand or a faceless third party certification. With love, I make the products you buy and consume every day. 

Join with me, connect to me and together let’s expand this movement to lift other women in conflict-affected areas into this economic revolution!

“Origins” is where we, your producers and products, come from. Since the beginning of globalization, consumers have enjoyed thousands of products whose base ingredients originate from Africa without even knowing. Approximately 70% of the world’s cocoa and 25% of the world’s gold comes from Africa yet less than 1% of finished products do. With movements like ours, this dynamic which fulls climate change, conflict and gender inequities is beginning to change.
“Origins” is the lush rainforest in the Congo and the lustrous gold mines in Western Kenya. “Origins” is the erupting Nyiragongo volcano and the calm sunset of Mombasa.  “Origins” is part of a movement that is reclaiming what has been lost in time.
Come back to your roots with us in our journey and to the source of life itself. Africa is the cradle of the best of the best, and that should be known across the world. Wounds from centuries of exploitation and silence need to heal. The narrative needs changing, and we can do this together. Join us.

To be a part of this movement, shop our high-quality products and taste the empowerment.

We are ‘not-not’ a chocolate company or a jeweler, a carpenter or an artist! Huh, what does that mean!? We are a social enterprise training and giving women the tools to make the world's most glorious chocolate, highest quality jewelry and thoughtfully curated items that represent the origins of the producers we work with.
We are a women-led not-for-profit working towards building peace and resilient communities, fighting climate change and empowering women through economic development. We do this through creating first of their kind in-country value addition within conflict-affected and high-risk areas. We had the first ever chocolate making facility in the DRC, and decided to work exclusively with female survivors of gender-based violence.
Our aim is creating pathways that others can follow and providing opportunities that lead to peace and development of the communities we work with.

We are reinventing consumer-choice to focus first on our social missions. For communities in conflict-affected areas this means diversifying their economies so they aren’t dependent on just one industry like mining. Most of the communities we’re partnered with produce cocoa and coffee right next to artisanal gold mines. Usually this economic benevolence means they’re also targets for armed rebel groups, criminal syndicates and dastardly villains. But when these communities work with development programs like ours, usually as part of a larger foreign aid program, it can give them a chance to rebuild from the conflict, forge stronger economies and hopefully prevent conflict from flaring up again. They no longer must rely on just selling extractives or a once-a-year harvest. From bean to bar, from ore to earring, they can be a part of the entire process, and benefit from it!

Go buy something right now and help us spread the impact across more communities. Go, go, go!

Learn more about how we are reinventing development, sustainability, and consumer-choice.

We are women. We are not just women producers, we are women leaders, women farmers, women chocolate makers, women jewelers. We have so much to bring to the table.
For centuries women have been marginalized and remained in the footnotes of development.
We’re tired of that!
Are we only women? No, of course not! Much of our work includes men who share our goals for equity and opportunity.
Empowering one woman leads to the empowerment of her entire community. One woman can raise a whole community from poverty, conflict, and environmental ruin. We work with women to lay foundations for a better future and resilient communities. We work with women to end the cycle of poverty and conflict, so that peace can come back to communities that have been without it for so long.
We work with women because we are women, and we must have each other’s backs as part of a global sisterhood.

Peace can only take hold and remain in an area when people have steady employment and something to look forward to each day. While it is a higher risk for us, knowing that our work creates new opportunities every day that keep conflict away is more than enough to make up for it.

Here are some basic facts: More than 70% of the cocoa, 20% of the gold, and 12% of the coffee the world consumes comes from Africa. Yet, less than 1% of the finished products are made here.
Most of the raw materials are used by mainstream companies who put their own stamp on the finished product, and you never find out that the chocolate you’re eating, the gold in your wedding band or the coffee in your favorite brew came from Africa.
Typically, raw materials will be taken from Africa, shipped halfway across the world, processed then shipped to another country which will then claim the finished product as their own.
This not only increases the carbon footprint of the product, but also erases the origin.
Local value addition means we keep raw materials at their source and do everything at origin to create a finished product that is of equal or superior quality and completely local.
Our products are entirely grown, sourced, and made in Africa, reclaiming the credit for being the world’s best.