Our Story is our Market Stall
Bands of Courage was conceived in early 2020 during COVID. As a family, to pass the time we began making bracelets at home with designs inspired by critically endangered animals like the Hawksbill Sea Turtle.
We then had the idea to sell our bands at our local market, to share stories about the impact of Climate Change on critically endangered animals to see if we could plant trees to help the animals - so we were "doing" as well as 'talking'.
What was unexpected was how hard the markets were - putting up the stall early in the morning, serving all day, and carting everything away in the evening. Also unexpected was the reward of being part of a community of creative, hardworking, truly amazing people.
Over the following 18 months we’d pop out of lockdown when markets reopened, talk non-stop about our endangered animals then pop back home for another lockdown to make more bands.
Our passion at markets became infectious. Inspired by our amazing supporters, we took the bold step (for us!) of opening an Instagram account and marketing online in 2021.
The number of trees planted per band quickly grew to "10 trees per band" as we better understood what we were doing and extended our range of jewelry.
The day we registered our Instagram account we decided to plant a tree for every follower. 10 trees for every band sold, 1 tree for every follower on Instagram.
Given our bands are handmade, the idea was to plant enough trees to offset the CO2 emissions of people making them. We hoped that as we grew, so will our followers, and therefore they would offset our increasing CO2 emissions, albeit at our cost. We’ve published these results on Instagram from day 1.
As of January 2023, we’ve planted over 30,000 trees for over 30,000 Instagram followers (in addition to the 500,000 trees for bands sold).
We allocate 230 trees for every person involved with Bands of Courage, full or part time. These trees offset their personal CO2 emissions, as well as their equal share of the world’s total CO2 emissions from every plane, train and automobile, every brick and building on the planet. It’s explained in the section called ‘Be Net Zero’.
30,000 trees for 30,000 Instagram followers offset the total global emissions of over 100 people, more than enough to offset the 41 people working with us including, for example, the team at our local post office.
When we began we used natural materials, like fabric, silicon, and glass. This year (2023), we've decided to make charms. We were lucky enough to find a wonderful eco-driven team and they make them by hand using recycled gold and silver (99.97%).
Our journey is entering a new chapter with the launch of our charms this year. Fingers crossed you love them as much as we do, and together we can help restore one of Nature’s six lungs, the rainforests of Madagascar.
We are blessed to have met so many wonderful people to help the animals. Thank you so very, very much for your support.
Our Family