Desperate to fill her children’s empty tummies, a young mother tucks her little ones into bed and goes out into the streets to earn money for food. To help support her siblings, a teenage girl eagerly accepts a tourism job, only to find herself forced to sell her body. These scenarios play out time and again in the cities and coastal areas of this beautiful island nation, where a burgeoning sex tourism industry fueled by widespread poverty and destitution puts numerous women at risk.

Working With Hope reaches out to these vulnerable women, offering counseling, crisis intervention, and a safe environment where they can learn and work with dignity. Trading dark street corners for a sunlit studio, women learn essential vocational skills while earning money to support their families. The jewelry and accessories they create go beyond just providing them with an income; they also help to fund educational scholarships, life skills training, and small business training, moving them toward futures of hope and promise. When you wear their creations, you partner with these women and empower them to build better futures for themselves and their families.

To protect our partners, we use a pseudonym for the name of this program.