Pendants

It was pretty amazing to see the way people stepped up to lend their talents, experiences and ideas to the next stage of Not4Sale. Our team planned breakfasts and events as opportunities to educate others on the crime of human trafficking. At these events we sold necklaces and pendants, not only to raise funds, but to raise awareness and to remind our supporters about their part in the solution.

Not4Sale pendants were, and still are, a huge hit. What started as an idea from Dr Hazel - a suggestion that we create a little token with "n4s" on it to hand out to people who gave to the mission - became a busy team of designers, producers, marketers and managers of pendants. For a year a team of committed, giving ladies served with their time, money and passion into this opportunity that kept getting bigger and bigger.

Our team got together images of Asia, such as elephants, landscapes, flora, Asian children and Thai silk. The first pendants that we had were ordered from creators who used pieces such as Jenga, Domino and Scrabble tiles. We used these as reminders that we are all small parts that make up the whole of the solution to human trafficking; that together, each using what we can bring, we can do something significant.

We also used glass tiles and placed our images underneath them to create pendants - these were by far the best sellers and are what we have stuck with to this day. Since the early days many more designs have been added and taken away from our collection. Some of my favorites have come from our Kid4Kids collection.

Kids4Kids was contest we held within the schools of our area, inviting children to design images that they felt helped raise awareness about human trafficking. Some schools advertised this contest as something the children could do at home and some put it right into their art curriculum for the students. We were blown away by the support and the response!

Around 1000 entries were made into the contest - some amazing designs from children in elementary school all the way up to high school.

This also opened the door for us to go into the schools and educate the students on human trafficking and what Not4Sale was doing to combat it. This awareness for our young people is a huge passion for me and I'm in awe of how God used what we were already doing with the pendants to make these opportunities available.

In that time and the time since, we have sold our pendants at trade fairs, churches, schools, events and businesses and have had a tremendous response to the place where almost everyone you talked to in our town of 20,000 at the time had heard about Not4Sale and either had their own collection of pendants or knew someone who did.

Looking back over this time of getting this fundraiser off the ground, I am so blessed with the people who jumped on board and gave their all to be world-changers for these little children.

Honored to be used by Him alongside you,

xoxo J