Products empower change

Sunassee, along with classmates Faaez ul Haq ’12 and Amira Polack ’12, joined Danny Growald ’11 to found the Princeton Social Entrepreneurship Initiative. Polack, the current co-president, described PSEI as a student organization spin-off of the course that they took three years ago.

PSEI has recently launched a new initiative — a brand called “Products with Purpose” — which encompasses two currently ongoing projects: ‘Ubomi Beads’ and ‘My Card, My Story’. The initiative is led by current PSEI vice president Daniel Gastfriend ’13 and PSEI member Nava Friedman ’13. Friedman is a former senior writer for The Daily Princetonian.

Ubomi Beads facilitates the production and distribution of South African-crafted jewelry that is made of recycled material. The project was founded by Angela Groves ’12, Karen O’Neill ’12, Krystal Valentin ’12 and Polack after the four studied abroad together in South Africa in the spring of 2011.

Groves said that the group visited a high-poverty area in South Africa and spent time with a local woman that made jewelry from recycled magazine paper.

“We thought it would be great to help her sell her products in an international market … [and] give back to a community that taught us so much,” she explained.

According to the Ubomi Beads website, the organization’s mission is to “empower single women, youth and community” through economic progress, education and environmental stewardship. Groves said that the University’s chapter was just the beginning.

“We have already established a Princeton chapter of Ubomi Beads and plan to expand to at least 10 more college campuses by the end of the year,” Groves wrote. “We hope to raise awareness about global poverty and the ability of people our age to take action to end global poverty [and] to foster an identity of global citizenship on campuses across the nation.”

Groves said she is optimistic that the organization will be kept alive at the University after the four seniors graduate. She noted that University students currently studying in South Africa have already expressed interest in taking over the chapter.

The other Products with Purpose brand — My Card, My Story — was founded by Nikhil Basu Trivedi ’11, Sankalp Gosain ’11, Sanchali Pal ’12 and Fatema Waliji ’12. All students of Indian heritage, they founded MCMS in order to “sustainably empower children in Mumbai’s slums to escape the cycle of poverty through education and the arts,” according to its website.

MCMS creates greeting cards that tell the stories of children that live in the slums.

Pal, who is also a member of PSEI, said in an interview that the idea to work with these two products came up at a PSEI meeting because “a lot of people [who] have ties to PSEI are doing things with arts and crafts.”

“Based on the success of this first launch, [we are] hopefully incorporating” other student-led projects and products, she said.

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PSEI sought to partner with MCMS and Ubomi Beads because it sought “products that are ready to go,” Friedman said in an interview.

Friedman said that PSEI created the Products with Purpose brand to establish a brand of products to facilitate expansion. Already, she said, many other groups have contacted PSEI asking to have their products incorporated with the umbrella brand.

In the early stages, Friedman and Gastfriend decided to partner with the U-Store in order to sell products from these student-founded social ventures.

“It’s really about bringing students and the U-store and the University and the whole social entrepreneurship endeavor together in this effort,” Polack said in an email.

PSEI then contacted the representatives of the U-store and began working with Dale Schroeder, a senior buyer for the store. Pal said that Schroeder was helpful to the group and that their partnership shows that the U-store is “a place that connects” students and is not “just an overpriced convenience store.”

Although the products support good causes, the two sides collaborated to be sure it would be a good business deal for both.

“While we want this to be sustainable and long-lasting, it has to make sense for everyone,” Pal said.

Schroeder was tasked with figuring out if it was practical to carry the products. He eventually convinced U-store president Jim Sykes to place the products in the store.

Schroeder said that at the end of the day, he was convinced by the students’ passion.

“Since we are a co-op ultimately owned by the students, alumni and staff, we always try to be supportive of student initiatives if at all possible,” he wrote. “I saw how passionate they were about these causes, and we wanted to help if feasible.”

However, Schroeder cautioned that the “proof will be in the details,” he said.

“Having the right product at the right price at the right time are retail rules that still apply to socially conscious products,” he said. “We hope the products will be positively received initially, but the real success of the product will be if it is sustainable over time.”

Both Ubomi Beads and MCMS can be found near the school supplies section in the on-campus U-store.

Correction: Due to an editing error, the position of Nava Friedman '13 was misstated in this article. She is a member, not the vice president, of the Princeton Social Entrepreneurship Initiative. The 'Prince' regrets the error.