You can make a massive impact as a social entrepreneur....
"We began soleRebels to bring jobs to our community, a place where there literally were NONE. This hurt us because where we are based and work is the community where we grew up, where our father grew and where our grandma settled when she migrated from the countryside in Gojjam. By the time we were growing up it was clear that a better life was non-existent for this community. We committed ourselves to not only creating jobs for our fellow citizens but to excellent paying ones; ones that were FAR & ABOVE what other local employers were paying for similar work! Our wages on average are over 233% higher than the industry average. What that means is that our average workers earn a full 4 to 5 times the legal minimum wage and over 3 TIMES the industry average. Many workers earn much more! That's what we mean by a PROUD WAGE!"
- Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu is founder and Managing Director of soleRebels, the world's fastest-growing African footwear brand and the only Fair Trade-certified footwear company in the world. Growing up in a poor suburb of Addis Ababa, Bethlehem decided that there was only one way to defeat poverty – use local craftsmanship to make products that can compete in the global marketplace. She decided on footwear and today 70,000 pairs of shoes leave her factory every year. soleRebels has been expanding rapidly and today exports to no fewer than 45 countries and is targeting 50 stand alone soleRebels retail stores across the United States by 2018 and 500 worldwide by 2022.
Read Bethlehem's full LoA Profile here.