Kairos Jewelry seeks to provide sustainable income and preventative medical care for those living below the international poverty line in Ghana, West Africa. In 2008 on their first trip to Ghana, Phyllis and David Morris, DO founders of Kairos and both medical professionals, became deeply burdened by the needs of the children and families that they treated in medical clinics in the bush villages. The following year, close friends of the Morris' and co-founders, Charlie and Katheryn Pennington, joined the Morris' in Ghana and their hearts were moved as well. Both the Morris' and the Penningtons returned from the second trip to Ghana, longing to make a lasting impact on the people of Ghana and to give hope and a future to the villages they visited.
Most of the children that Dr. and Mrs. Morris treated during the clinics were suffering from symptoms of malaria, a disease caused by and transmitted through infected mosquitos. Malaria is the leading cause of death for children under the age of 5. According to UNICEF, in 2008, the rate of mortality for children under 5 was around 76,000, with the percentage under-five with fever receiving anti-malarial drugs around 43%. To date there is no known cure for malaria, so the only hope to conquer the disease is through prevention.
In 2010, Phyllis made her third trip to Ghana. She visited local markets and purchased some beautiful glass beads with the intention of making jewelry for herself and some close friends. As she began making bracelets, her heart returned to the needs she had seen over the last three years, and she began to dream. Could this jewelry be used to somehow bridge the thousands of miles separating her from the healing and hope she longed to give to the precious children of Ghana? To Phyllis and to some close friends that had also traveled to Ghana, it was clear. This was “kairos”, meaning “the right or opportune moment…in which something special happens.”
The result of that dream is more than just a beautiful, handcrafted piece of jewelry. It is a “right moment” for a sustainable industry in a poverty-stricken country where more than 30% of the population lives on less than a $1/day. Through a unique partnership, native Ghanian women will produce the handcrafted jewelry and in return receive sustainable employment and a wage that is more than double what they would be earning in another similar industry.
In addition, it is the “right moment” to be fighting a disease that is claiming too many young lives in Africa. For each bracelet purchased, a mosquito net will be given to a family or individual in Ghana to help fight the spread of malaria. The only hope to defeat malaria is prevention, and sleeping under an ITN is the most effective way to fight the spread of the disease.
Each bracelet is uniquely hand-crafted with beads from various regions in Ghana, and is an original design. Thank you for your purchase and your belief that it is the “right moment” to fight poverty and disease in Africa.
