A Community Built Through Creativity in Baton Rouge

Nothing inspires optimism like making a genuine connection through community, feeling the therapy of creative expression or seeing the impact of purposeful work in action.

In each of these, runs a common thread: Hope needs hands.

Over homemade sweet cornbread and a table collaged with colorful creations and raw materials, the unpredictable rhythms of Farsi waltzing with English carry through the workspace of The Hope Shop, the Baton Rouge-based retail wing of Hands Producing Hope. The skills training, literacy and mentorship nonprofit has a growing footprint with impoverished women and families in the indigenous southern region of Costa Rica and the remote islands of Lake Kivu in Rwanda. In Baton Rouge, refugee women are the talented makers creating, assembling and putting final touches on a vast array of gorgeous goods sold to support the organization’s larger mission.

On a warm summer morning, Sudan native Layla Doud, and Afghanis Khadija Mubieen and Latifa Ekhteiary — all who have fled their war-torn countries for Louisiana — are cutting and shaping felt sourced from a fair-trade collective in Nepal into vivid decorative bouquets that will soon accent homes and splash color into dried floral arrangements across the country.

It’s “Hope Box Day,” and along with Hands Producing Hope Program Director Amber Vaughn, the women are busy filling monthly Anchor of Hope boxes with unique accessories and home goods like these felt bouquets to be shipped to hundreds of subscribers in about 48 hours.

Above them on the wall is the original banner that Hands Producing Hope Founder Rebecca Gardner would prop up at markets a decade ago when this kind of global reach and refugee assistance program was little more than a concept for a recent college grad. Everyday purchases with a lasting impact, it reads over a rising sun. Every item in The Hope Shop tells a story of opportunity, redemption and hope.

“These are my friends, but they are like sisters,” says Mubieen who sends some of her earnings back home to her sister, a widow raising three children. “Most of my family is in Afghanistan, but this is my family here. There’s no hope in Afghanistan. Here, we have people like Rebecca who help you, and want good things for you. Here, there is a future.”

Vaughn had experience in the nonprofit clothing and home goods space, but meeting Gardner was all she needed to know that Hands Producing Hope was impacting lives in Baton Rouge and far beyond. She had to be involved.

“I saw Rebecca’s drive, and I saw her feet on the ground, but with a real CEO mentality,” Vaughn says. “Rebecca’s a real go-getter, and says ‘This my dream, let’s make it a reality.’ So, she’s made me a dreamer.”

After meeting disenfranchised Costa Rican women on a six-month missionary stint through a church in her early 20s, Gardner decided to connect her desire to meet community needs for sustainable change with her growing awareness of ethically-made products. Hands Producing Hope was born.

“I’d had a lightbulb moment that I couldn’t trust companies to make wise decisions for people or the planet, and I had to make those decisions for myself, just to match my values fully with how I spend my money,” says the 32-year-old founder. “And I thought Hands Producing Hope could go into communities with a heart to provide them with holistic services, work, education and community. A lot of them in Costa Rica were so isolated.”

In September 2021, Ekhteiary was alone and pregnant when she arrived in Baton Rouge from Afghanistan. A pediatric nurse in her home country, she had no one, no connections and no access to job leads here.

“I was depressed because my family wasn’t here, the language is different, the people are different, the religion is different,” she says. “It was very hard, and I was home alone all the time. I just wanted to know more people.”

Ekhteiary was introduced to Gardner and Hands Producing Hope through Catholic Charities Diocese of Baton Rouge, and now she gets picked up for work — many days with her now 2-year-old daughter who’s already speaking English — and creates embroidery and macrame goods sold in the shop and at pop-up markets.

“Everything we’ve done has come out of great relationships we have with people; it always starts there,” says Gardner, who communicates frequently with local Rwandan officials about meeting the region’s needs with maternal health and adult literacy. “Sometimes I’ve been motivated to more closely define what we offer, but when you do that, you lose the ability to be relational. I want to always be able to come alongside someone genuinely and say, ‘What do you need?’”

Opposite of fast fashion, The Hope Shop’s offerings make their way to shelves with more detours and details included. This is ethics-effective, not cost-effective, production, so the organization relies not only on online sales but also monthly donors for support.

Artist Lori Demand had never heard of The Hope Shop but saw an Instagram post last year about the group’s annual fundraising gala and offered to donate one of her paintings to their silent auction. After loving the gala, she took an earring-making class with Doud and decided to become a monthly donor.

“It feels so important to help people who didn’t have the same opportunities I’ve had, and to help end cycles within families, like poverty,” Demand says. “Their work is really phenomenal, just mind-blowing, and I’m so happy that my relationship with Hands Producing Hope has just continued to grow.”

As box after box gets filled in the shop, the makers share laughs together. “Hope Box Day” will be another success. With eight years of experience, Doud is the longest tenured maker of the group and is something of a language guide for the others. Her quiet smile consistently lights up the room.

“Working together and learning English together, sharing food together, is all so very nice,” the Sudanese earrings specialist and mother of three says. “It’s just what we needed.”

Consumers can find community and connection through more meaningful purchases, also, and Gardner wants them to know that’s a message of hope, too.

“I never saw the use in earning a paycheck if it wasn’t really helping someone else in the process,” Vaughn says. “It’s just boiling it down to things that matter like spending time at this table with like-minded people, no matter what language they speak, or where we are from. We have the same energy for making a difference and taking baby steps in life together.”

Q&A

A big theme of The Hope Shop is choosing not to perpetuate fast fashion. Is that difficult for some people to wrap their heads around? Two things I like to say: When you buy staple pieces that are made ethically and of quality, you are buying goods that will last from year to year and it really does save you money in the long run. And, there is a cost to your items being so cheap. That cost is the negative impact on our planet and negative impact for the lives of the people stuck working for fast fashion companies. Someone, somewhere, is paying the price for our underpriced goods, whether we see them or not.

Looking back on a decade with hindsight on this whole nonprofit effort, what is one thing, particularly early on, that you might have done differently? I would have slowed down and put more effort early on building a base of consistent donors. Doing that would have alleviated a lot of current stressors we have now trying to sustain these amazing programs we have built, but don’t always have the consistent funds to sustain.