I was able to spend the most amazing weekend in Nashville at the Trades of Hope retreat and training called Empower. I roadtripped down with some other ladies! We stayed in Dundee, OH with one of the ladies’ brother-in-law’s in Amish country and picked another one up in the Cincinnati area on our way down. This trip was…. wow. It’s taken me all day to write up this post because of how many things I could talk about with this trip. I feel like it would be a really long post if I said everything I wanted to say. Being in one place with so many other women (and some men!) who have the same mindset as you is just absolutely incredible. It felt like I was at a missions conference honestly.
We stayed at the Gaylord Opryland resort, and it was beautiful! I stayed with three other ladies that I had met for the first time.. everyone I met there was so easy to become friends with right away so I had a blast with these ladies! One of my roommates traveled a lot for work, so she had Marriot rewards and we got an upgraded room! We were SO spoiled. The resort was going through a summerfest and the theme was Alice and Wonderland, so it was cool to see all of the decor for that theme.
One of the ladies set up a tour with Thistle Farms since they are one of the artisan groups we support with Trades of Hope. It was so amazing to meet and watch the ladies work. Their purpose is to give women with dark pasts jobs so they don’t have to stay involved with prostitution/drugs/other felonies in order to support their families. You never think about the fact that ladies like that have a hard time finding places that will hire them with their questionable pasts, but they need to make a living too so they are forced to turn to dishonorable ways to make money. Many of these ladies want to make a change in their life especially once they’ve found hope, but lack opportunity. This place gives them hope!! Here’s a link to the products of theirs that we carry:
http://bit.ly/lovehealsset I bought a Lip Smoothie which is part of this set… it’s SO GOOD. Smells and feels great!
http://bit.ly/sucycosmetic
Some of the wonderful ladies!!
The hot tub in the resort was huge!!
2 of my awesome roommates from Fort Wayne!
I learned that Trades of Hope is officially supporting over 13,000 artisans, who are in turn impacting over 42,000 people worldwide. And this is just the beginning!
We got tons of new products!! Can’t wait to feature them in a blog post in the coming weeks! If you’re impatient like me and want to look around at them now, here they are: http://bit.ly/TOHFallLine2017
Let’s Empower women out of poverty!
There is an incentive in Trades of Hope where your sales can go toward giving a bike to a girl in Cambodia (which can help her with attending school, which will keep her out of going into the sex trade) and giving a water wheel to a woman in India (which will save her HOURS of her day, and prevent her from having chronic back, shoulder, and neck pain from carrying water on her head). I LOVE that this company doesn’t focus on earning tons of fancy trips or cars, but the incentives are to make a larger impact on poverty in the world!
They gave us a card and envelope so we could write a note to our artisans all around the globe! I chose to send mine to our artisans in Peru, so I was able to use a little Spanish in my note. 🙂
Crappy quality selfie with one of the Founders of Trades of Hope! They are so down to earth and I love that 2 of them are close to my age!!
Thanks for tuning in to my adventures from this weekend! Be sure to follow us on Instagram to keep up with us!!
