Benefiting from the many facets of beauty

A jewellery start-up is challenging empowerment and agency.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Three women stand, two lean into each other sharing a joke, while the other laughs too.

Members of Zena's Launch Pad team, Kamuli, Uganda.

Zena.

I have a conundrum. I’ve started and re-started this article four times now. And I’m surprised that I’ve settled on this opening. But alas, I have a deadline to adhere to and a cold coffee to warm back up. So, this will have to do. I’m struggling with this opening paragraph because when it comes to writing about Zena - the female-led, non-profit, environmentally friendly jewellery and accessory brand - I simply do not know where to begin.

There are too many facets of Zena that deserve to sit front and centre in this article; too many details to revel in, too many stories to tell, too much success to pick at and analyse.

Where do I possibly start?

How about with the delightful fact that the brand is named after a beloved pet goat who makes appearances on their TikTok? You know, kick things off on an endearing note. Or perhaps the fact that there are playlists curated for all occasions, dance challenges, and even a recipe for tequila lollipops on their website? That would certainly alert people to how seriously this team takes the art of having fun. Or maybe I should open with the fact that they’ve both challenged and refined how I perceive empowerment and agency. I could explain how they have alerted me to the importance of investing in female entrepreneurs as a means of tackling extreme poverty and profound gender inequality.

Yes. I think that’s it. Let’s start there and work our way backwards, shall we?

These women are not beneficiaries, they are benefactors – and that’s an important, not to mention beautiful, distinction.

In which case, here’s the heartbeat of Zena, here’s what you need to know in order to understand everything else about them: women living in rural poverty are currently facing two major barriers when it comes to business opportunity and entrepreneurship, and Zena are tackling both head on.

Firstly, female entrepreneurs in these settings have little to no capital with which to launch their business ventures. To combat this, every single product offered by Zena, whose HQ is in Kamuli (Uganda), is hand-crafted by women who were previously living below the poverty line. Through the Zena apprenticeships, these women are able to support themselves and their families while also earning/saving the capital they need to launch their own businesses once the short-term apprenticeship comes to an end. These women are not beneficiaries, they are benefactors – and that’s an important, not to mention beautiful, distinction.

Secondly, as well as a lack of capital, these women are battling a lack of education. And so, through a multi-phase entrepreneurship programme (The Zena Launch Pad), Zena are giving their apprentices both the theoretical and practical tools that they need to launch and sustain their own businesses. Women are graduating from this programme with literacy and numeracy skills, a viable business plan, industry-specific knowledge and skills, as well as leadership and development.

Because here’s the bottom-line, the foundation upon which Zena stands, the deep conviction of both Caragh and Loren, the co-founders and CEOs; agency matters. Widening one’s understanding of success to encompass these women’s agency, for better or for worse, matters. Empowering these women to earn their own capital, to see the unfolding of their own ideas, to know that their decisions matter, it makes all the difference. No dependence, no hand-outs, and no debt. Just the kind of empowerment that is laced with agency.

It’s bold. But it’s working.

There was utter delight in her eyes when she explained how good generates more good and creation generates more creation.

So far, time-stamped at this moment in time, Zena’s hybrid and holistic approach has led to 67 female entrepreneurs, over 150 children in school, and nearly 500 lives lived above the poverty line. Women are hiring other women, businesses are birthing more businesses, education is generating more education.

Pretty special, isn’t it? Pretty Jesus-like too.

I had the immense joy of chatting to Caragh, one of the co-founders and CEOs of Zena; she reminded me that multiplication is one of Jesus’ most classic moves. Just as the people sitting around Jesus with wide eyes and numb backsides witnessed one humble lunch feed tens-of-thousands of mouths, so are Caragh and her team witnessing jaw-dropping multiplication happen before their very eyes. There was utter delight in her eyes when she explained how good generates more good and creation generates more creation. Compassion is contagious and innovation spreads. Although Zena is by no means an enterprise that squeezes itself into a religious box (empowering women of all faiths and none), it is easy to see how Caragh and Loren’s faith in a God who wrote generative goodness into the fabric of reality, informs their mission to write it into their business model.

Something else that is woven into the DNA of Zena, much to my delight, is an unabashed celebration of the female consumer. 2023 may well be remembered as the year when an economic earthquake was caused by Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and Barbie. According to Forbes, it is likely to be regarded as the year where people began to take seriously and analyse the power of 'the female dollar'. And Zena, with their penchant for all things pink and glittery, have been sitting ahead of the curve for a little while. Their products, as seen in Vogue, Marie Claire, and Harvey Nicholls (as well as embellishing the looks of numerous celebrities), seem to have been made with this cultural moment in sight. Their aesthetic perfectly encapsulates the resurgence of female playfulness and the reclaiming of ‘girliness’ as something to embrace and revel in. As I have already referenced, joy is something that this team take incredibly seriously.

The celebration of women infiltrates every layer of Zena’s existence, that much is clear. While their products delight the female gaze, their profits sow into female entrepreneurship. Both of which display how working toward gender equality, particularly in contexts such as Kamuli, is a means by which we can wage a war on extreme poverty.

Women serving women, who are serving women, who are serving women. And on it goes – so beautifully circular. So intriguingly God-inspired.

Article

Care

Change

Mental Health

6 June 2023

4 min read

Social prescribing for whole person care

Responding to an anxiety epidemic, there’s a growth in social prescribing with a spiritual wellbeing element. Esther Platt explores how it's working out locally.

Esther Platt

Esther works as a Senior Consultant for the Good Faith Partnership. She sits in the secretariat for the ChurchWorks Commission.

Two people sit at a table with their hands resting on top of it. One speaks to the other

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Since 2001, Mental Health Awareness Week has been marked once a year in May. This year, the theme was anxiety - an increasingly relevant topic in a country that has endured three years of world-changing crises and the soaring cost of living. Research from the Mental Health Foundation has found that 1 in 10 UK adults feel hopeless about financial circumstances and more than one-third feel anxious.

For centuries, it has been recognised that spiritual well-being is closely tied to mental well-being. By spiritual wellbeing, I don’t mean organised religion. I mean our sense of relationship to a higher-power or reality beyond our own, and our sense of purpose and meaning in life, as Craig Ellison outlines it as in his paper Spiritual Well-Being: Conceptualization and Measurement.

In Man’s Search for Meaning holocaust survivor Victor Frankl compellingly makes the case that in a world of suffering, our survival depends on our sense of purpose, meaning and hope. Frankl coined the term ‘the self-transcendence of human existence’ by which he explained that human beings look for meaning beyond themselves, either in a cause, a person to love, or a higher power.

With an increased understanding of the holistic nature of wellbeing, and the value of spirituality, a new way of looking at health is emerging.

While modern psychologists are still building a clinical-grade evidence base on the value of spirituality, there is clear agreement that spiritual wellbeing is crucial for a good quality of life, especially for those who are facing adverse life events, as you can read on the US National Library of Medicine web site. Traditionally, health provision in the UK has focused exclusively on the physical, and more recently the mental. However, with an increased understanding of the holistic nature of wellbeing, and the value of spirituality, a new way of looking at health is emerging.

Social prescribing is one way in which this is being done, and across the country.

In social prescribing, local agencies such as charities, social care and health services refer people to a social prescribing link worker. Social prescribing link workers give people time, focusing on ‘what matters to me?’ to coproduce a simple personalised care and support plan. This involves ‘prescribing’ individuals to local community groups such as walking clubs, art classes, gardening groups and many other activities.

Churches are playing a crucial role making social prescribing happen. St Mary’s Church in Andover, offer a wellbeing course to members of the community who have been directed to them through the local GP surgery.

Members of Revival Fires Church in Dudley have been trained to offer Listening and Guidance support to those who are referred by a GP.

Beyond social prescribing, St John’s Hoxton in London offer the Sanctuary Mental Health course to their community which gives people an opportunity to share their experiences and find solidarity in their struggles.

Church provides a space where the breadth of our wellbeing, our desire for purpose, community and hope can be supported in a way that the NHS does not have capacity or experience to deliver. As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, writes

"The issue of mental health is one that requires a holistic approach on an individual basis, incorporating as appropriate psychiatric, medical and religious support’.

Olivia Amartey, Executive Director for Elim, an international movement of Pentecostal churches adds,

‘I am convinced that there is no other organisation on earth that cares for the whole person, as well as the church. Its engagement with the statutory authorities, focussed on individuals’ well-being, provides an invaluable opportunity for a synchronised partnership to the benefit of all our communities.’

Jesus told his followers, ‘I have come so that you can have life and have it to the full’. This is the hope that animates churches. Christians find meaning and purpose in the hope of life, peace and justice that Jesus gives. Church can be a space where the complexity of hurt and suffering is acknowledged, and where we can find solidarity and support in the presence of those who can help us find purpose and meaning.

At ChurchWorks, a commission of leaders from the 15 biggest church denominations in the UK, we are excited by the prospect of more churches providing this space. On 18th May we held ChurchWorks for Wellbeing, in which we gathered over 300 church leaders to explore how the church can bring hope to our communities in this time. We shared stories of small and simple conversations, where offering a listening service, an art class or a food pantry enabled churches to give people in their community space to be, to grieve, to process and to grow. From the conference, it is our hope that we will see hundreds more churches start to engage in social prescribing and welcome their communities to access holistic wellbeing support.

At a time when anxiety is rife, and it is so easy to feel despair and hopelessness, the church offers a vital resource to us: a place where our spiritual wellbeing can be nurtured, where we can find purpose, where we can find community, where we can find hope.