Folk tales, Greek tragedies, age-old epics, and fables: stories are human currency, traded between people to forge friendships and alliances, to preserve cultures and warn against the pernicious cycle of history. Stories pop up like weeds; they persist, they survive.
But what about the stories that come to us not through words woven together by mothers and fathers at bedtime, or images projected as quick flashes of color on a movie screen? What about the stories we can actually hold in our hands? These, though sometimes vulnerable to physical wear and tear, can be just as long lasting and often affect us with the dual power of material and emotional weight.
A candle can be just this sort of story made manifest when one traces the candle back—from wick to wax to mold—to the one who created it. “In each of the candles that I make,” says Wafa, “a part of my story goes there.” Wafa, an Iraqi widow supporting four children, is one of forty-four women entrepreneurs in Baghdad working with Prosperity Candle, a new social enterprise that invests in women living in distressed areas of the world who are enthusiastic to start their own businesses producing distinctive candles for local and international markets. When you buy a Prosperity Candle, the sturdy pillar does more than burn bright: it comes with the name of the woman who made it, so that each woman may have the chance to tell her story.
In partnership with non-profit organization Women for Women International, Prosperity Candle has now successfully completed a year-long pilot program in Baghdad, Iraq. The forty-four participating women entrepreneurs were equipped with candle-making kits and trained by the Prosperity Candle team in the basic process of creating candles in the safety of their own homes. The women have responded enthusiastically to a business opportunity that is simple to learn, requires incremental investments in low-cost equipment, and can be easily expanded to employ dozens of people in their communities.
During the pilot project, Nazahat, one of the Iraqi entrepreneurs, exceeded all expectations by creating 226 candles in about two weeks, earning the equivalent of twice the average wage in Iraq. “I want the entire world to know what an Iraqi woman can do,” she reflects. “I trust that I will change my life to be better than before.”
We all want to tell our stories. Wafa and Nazahat, along with forty-two others in Baghdad, have the unique opportunity to transport their respective tales out of Iraqi war zones and into our homes, where they burn on through the night. Through Prosperity Candle, sisters, mothers, widows, and wives are given the means to unite and ward off the darkness with a million points of light—each a symbol of hope, transformation and empowerment through enterprise. Each a story to be held in our hands, to be felt and passed on as we share the light.
