How it Began

A crossroads in my career is where I found myself in early 2008, craving a new opportunity, specifically one that would enable me to make a difference in the world.  I longed to marry my creative background, my love for travel and experience in fashion with a career that brought it all together.   Then, on a crisp April night in 2008 a longtime friend invited me to see a screening of her friend’s documentary.   Oddly, I had a fateful sense that I had to go. 

After watching the screening about a young Kenyan woman, the audience was invited to purchase items the filmmaker had brought back from Kenya as a way to help finance her film.  There were the sandals!

From first sight, I, like most other women there, was enthralled with the sandals; the style, workmanship and comfort were great.  When the filmmaker told me that many of the sandals were handmade by impoverished Kenyan women living with HIV/AIDS, I knew I wanted to lend a hand.  My instant thought was that I could commercialize the sandals in the US in hopes of providing jobs for the women- artisans, thus helping to improve their lives. 

The Right Person at the Right Place

As someone who’s worked both as a wardrobe stylist and as an international buyer, my livelihood has depended on my keen eye for design and a knack for recognizing exceptional items of interest.   Having spent years scouring the globe for unique and marketable products in my career, I knew at once that I’d found a special product in the sandals.  

My gut told me other women would love these sandals, just as I did, and for the same reasons.  What’s more, my ten years experience importing original Mexican folk art, handmade by artisans in a tiny rural village, gave me the confidence that I had the skills and wherewithal to do it.  But Africa, I thought!!?? 

I’d never been to sub-Saharan Africa, but had dreamed of going my whole life.  I reasoned, “this has fallen in my lap, and it doesn’t come much more up my alley, so it must be meant to be.”

My hunch about a positive market response was confirmed by the orders I took as soon as I began to show the sandals to store buyers in CA.  

Dream Becomes a Reality

Before I knew it I was off to Kenya to meet with artisans and to start organizing the process of having sandals made for export.   I could not have gotten much of anything done in Kenya had it not been for my trusted, hard-working, and compassionate friend Nester (Amie’s self-described “African mother”).  Nester came into my world as the angel that I needed to take my idea one step further (yet another sign that this crazy new venture was meant for me).

A 30-year veteran HIV/AIDS consultant and nurse, Nester sanctioned my cause and came aboard wholeheartedly without even testing the waters.  By helping connect me to her friends and contacts in Nairobi, Global Girls went from a dream to a reality in little more than a few weeks.  

Most importantly, Nester fully appreciates how HIV/AIDS and poverty are closely intertwined.   She and I agreed that impoverished women’s empowerment would be achieved through their own endeavor and that the sandal-making was a sure possibility to providing economic opportunity.