Pictured above: IACD Student Member Xabrina-Michel’li Thompson, South Africa
Ever since IACD began welcoming students as members of our association, we have been regularly reminded of the power of young voices to influence and effect change. All over the world, young people have been speaking up and taking action on climate change, poverty, and discrimination.
Today, we are proud to shine a light on the work being done by our student member, Xabrina-Michel’li Thompson. She wrote to us to highlight the ways in which women are disproportionally affected by poverty in South Africa and explained her plans to tackle this pervasive issue. Her full report can be accessed and downloaded below.
In an excerpt from her report, Xabrina-Michel’li explains:
In my home country of South Africa there is a bottomless pit of need and the surest way to pull people out of this pit is through education, education which gives them an awareness of the value of their God given talents, inner strengths and resilience; an education which brings them into an environment where these talents can be applied to greatest economic advantage.
In South Africa, the majority of the vast numbers of women who make African beaded jewelry are disadvantaged, informal traders operating from their homes. These women do not have a platform from which to sell their jewelry, and consequently resort to selling on pavements in city centres, and on road sides in the country. This results in exploitation. Their jewelry is purchased by formal traders for a fraction of its worth and sold in their shops for very many times their original purchase price. Tragically, most of these woman live in abject poverty and are not remotely aware of the fact that they are being exploited, and even if they did know, there is absolutely no way that they could do anything about it.
As a student of the Gemological Institute of America’s Graduate Gemologist program and the recipient of the Womens Jewelry Association Gabriel Love Foundation Scholarship for 2019, I believe that I can use gemology and jewelry as a powerful instrument for individual growth and social emancipation in Africa. Once qualified I plan to establish a Womens Jewelry Association chapter in South Africa to empower these informal traders, and others, through skill transfer and raising awareness of the opportunities in this field, by making gemological and jewelry related courses available to people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds, people like me.
Her full report may be accessed here: https://www.iacdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IACD-Newsletter-Submission.pdf
All pictures courtesy of Xabrina-Michel’li. For more information, Xabrina-Michel’li can be reached at xabrimichelli@gmail.com.
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