One Reason Why Earth's Spirit Herbs Support Aura Cacia Essential Oils - Positive Change Project

Everywhere in the world, women and girls of courage and determination are trying to better their lives in the face of seemingly overwhelming difficulties. We're inspired by these women and girls and have created the Aura Cacia Positive Change Project, an annual grant program that supports organizations helping them transform their lives.

Women's Bean Project

Founded in 1989, Women’s Bean Project is an anomaly in the business world. It is a business, one that packages and sells bean soup mixes, baking mixes and other dry food products to stores across the U.S. and online. But tucked inside this business is a human services organization designed to provide a safe and accepting work environment where impoverished women can learn the skills required for gainful employment.

They are convicted felons, recovering addicts, victims of domestic violence. Many were teenage mothers and high school drop outs. They come to us for a chance to create new lives out of the rubble theirs have become – and they do it in just six to nine months. That we train women to become great workers only so they can leave us and become great workers for other employers is remarkable and challenging.

That the women transform their lives in such a short amount of time is inspiring and incredible to witness. Aura Cacia is honored to be a small part of such an amazig organization.

Lotus House

The Lotus House Women’s Shelter was established in 2006 to serve homeless women in Overtown, Miami. It was the first initiative of the Sundari Foundation, a non-denominational, non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of poor, disadvantaged and homeless women, youth and children.

Utilizing an innovative, trauma-informed, holistic format, Lotus House provides shelter and multi-faceted, comprehensive supportive services, including access to medical and mental health care, parenting education, counseling and parent/child therapy, life skills and educational advancement, job readiness training, and a host of enrichment activities from art and acupuncture to yoga and meditation offering alternative pathways to healing.

The shelter houses over 250 women and children on a daily basis, 680 annually. Families are permitted to live free up to a year, giving them the time and tools needed to heal, improve the quality of their lives, achieve greater self-sufficiency, and transition to new homes.

Lotus House addresses the special needs of homeless women, youth and children to help break the cycle of childhood abuse, domestic violence and homelessness. Residents are given the sanctuary, support, education and resources they need to heal, grow, and blossom into who they were truly meant to be.

The Aura Cacia Positive Change Program, which is funded with every purchase of an Aura Cacia product, donated $40,000 to Lotus House's Professional and Life Skills Center as a part of our 2017 Positive Change Project donations.

The Center is housed in the Lotus House Thrift Chic Boutique This store serves as the donations center that provides the women and children with basic clothing and household goods and furniture for their new homes when they transition from Lotus House. What isn't needed is sold in the store and online to fund programs. The store is also a “working classroom” to help build skills, work experience, professional references and a “nest egg” to prepare the women to leave Lotus House and start their new lives.

The Professional and Life Skills Center offers meaningful educational programs to provide the women and youth the shelter serves with access to the tools and resources they need to secure gainful full or part-time employment and become economically independent.

Aura Cacia is happy to support the opportunity Lotus House offers women and young people experiencing homelessness to build better lives for themselves.

Defy Ventures

Defy Ventures transforms and connects the lives of people with criminal histories and business leaders through their collaboration along the entrepreneurial journey.

Defy’s programs allow the intrinsic abilities of currently and formerly incarcerated men, women, and youth to flourish by encouraging them to “transform their hustle” into legal business activities. Defy’s vision is to replicate its programs in every prison system and major city in the U.S. and solve America’s costly social problems of mass incarceration and recidivism. Defy has proven its ability to generate transformative change through chapters in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and Omaha. Funds from the Positive Change Project will specifically aid Defy’s expansion efforts into Nebraska women’s prisons, working to produce transformational improvements in the lives of the nearly 500 incarcerated women in the state.

As a 2018 recipient of the Positive Change Project, Defy received $40,000 to support the implementation of its CEO of Your New Life (CEO YNL) program at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women to provide practical training to the nearly 500 women there who face substantial personal and professional barriers both during and after their incarceration. CEO YNL provides much more than entrepreneurship and employment readiness training to EITs – the program also gives EITs hope through a positive vision for their futures and equips them with the full spectrum of life-skills needed to successfully sustain themselves and their loved-ones after prison. 83% of incarcerated women are mothers to children, a reality addressed as a core component of the program. CEO YNL includes courses on relationship repair, forgiveness, working through depression and shame, parenting from behind bars, and holistic character development. CEO YNL’s family reunification services include graduation ceremonies with families inside prison, community events outside prison, and access for families to Defy courses online. Defy believes in an all-inclusive, realistic reentry plan for EITs and is ready to address all the unique challenges women face upon release.

Aura Cacia is happy to support the opportunities that Defy offers women, in hopes to assist in moving lives forward each and every day.

Girls Education & Mentoring Services

Your Aura Cacia purchases fund our Positive Change Project and help women positively transform their lives through support of organizations like Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) in New York City.

GEMS helps girls and young women, ages 12–24, who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking get out of the commercial sex industry. It's the only organization in New York State specifically designed to serve girls and young women in these situations and has helped hundreds of young women and girls exit the commercial sex industry and develop to their full potential.

The organization was founded in 1998 by Rachel Lloyd, a young woman who had been sexually exploited as a teenager and came to the U.S. as a missionary to work with women exiting prostitution. She saw the need for services for young women at risk for sexual exploitation who were being ignored by traditional social service agencies, and she committed to help them.

From her one-woman kitchen table project, GEMS has grown to be a nationally recognized and acclaimed organization. It's now one of the largest providers of services to commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked youth in the U.S., advocating at the local, state and national level for policies that support these young women.

This much-needed organization is changing individual lives, transforming public perception, and revolutionizing the systems and policies that impact sexually exploited youth so these young women can reach their potential and enjoy future success.

GEMS provides young women with empathetic, consistent support and viable opportunities for positive change. Aura Cacia is proud to provide them with $50,000 in support of their work as part of the 2017 Positive Change Project donations.

How To Apply

Apply for an Aura Cacia Positive Change Project Grant

Aura Cacia sales fund the Aura Cacia Positive Change Project, which supports organizations and projects that help women better their lives.

For example, our first donation went to Thistle Farms Young Survivors program helping young women who have suffered from abuse, drugs and prostitution.

Our goal with Positive Change Project grants is to support organizations that partner with women and girls who are actively working to positively transform their lives and projects that focus on equipping women and girls with the resources to further their commitment to live more purposeful lives.

Grants will support organizations and programs that:

• provide resources and services directly to women and girls who face substantial barriers to sustaining their commitment to positive change

• help disadvantaged women and girls become more stable and self-sufficient

• reinforce the commitment of women and girls to live healthfully and purposefully

• promote positive self-image, self-respect and self-confidence in women and girls

If you have questions, please email us at PositiveChangeProject@AuraCacia.com.