Kazuri is Swahili for “small and beautiful.” It’s also the name of a non-profit fair trade company based in Kenya that employs disadvantaged women —and the perfect way to describe the ceramic, hand-painted, clay jewellery it produces.
On Nov. 25, between 2 and 5 p.m., local resident Leslie Starkman and other members of Toronto Grandmothers Embrace will host a Kazuri jewellery sale at Body Harmonics Studio on Eglinton Avenue West. Approximately half of the proceeds will go to Kazuri and half of the proceeds will go toward the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign, which provides such essentials as food, housing and school uniforms to grandmothers who are caring for kids left orphaned as a result of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
“I found the whole issue of what was going on with AIDS in Africa, the notion that these older women were now taking care of children who were devastated by having lost their parents, and what that must mean, to be inspiring,” Starkman said.