Women's Empowerment Bead Party Toolkit

Preparing for your Spotlight Bead Party

• Sample agenda (PDF)
• Group activity: Teach a Woman to Fish (PDF)

Recommended videos

• The Girl Effect (3:00),  produced by the Nike Foundation
• A Powerful Truth (5:15), narrated by Nicholas Kristof, co-author of Half the Sky.
• Kavita Ramdas:  Radical Women, Embracing Tradition (18:40), TED Talk 2009
• Sheryl WuDunn:  Our Century’s Greatest Injustice (18:23), TED Talk 2010
• Jacqueline Novogratz on Escaping Poverty (7:34) TED Talk 2009
• Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai (11:13)
   

Recommended reading

Give a Little by Wendy Smith (non-fiction)
Simple, inexpensive things – a water filter, a bike, an irrigation pump, a bed net, a goat – not only solve one person’s crisis but cause a ripple effect that lifts a whole family, a town, and, astonishingly, even a nation out of poverty.

Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (non-fiction)
The book that started the conversation about empowering women and inspired the PBS documentary.

The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz (non-fiction)

A call to action that challenges us to grant dignity to the poor and to rethink our engagement with the world. 

Global Girlfriends by Stacey Edgar (non-fiction)
Learn how "simply starting" launched a socially conscious business that has helped women on five continents feed their families and send their children to school.

Women Run the Show in a Recovering Rwanda (Washington Post article)
56% of Rwanda’s parliament is now female, a small sliver of hope to come out of that country’s tragedy. 

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (fiction)
This is a story about two women whose lives are connected by an unexpected meeting on a beach in Nigeria.  Little Bee is a Nigerian refugee and Sarah is a British magazine editor. 

Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin (fiction)
Set in modern day Rwanda, Angel Tungaraza—mother, cake baker, keeper of secrets, a woman living on the edge of chaos—finds ways to transform lives, weave magic, and create hope amid the madness.