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Looking for a little gift for a favorite teacher, coach, co-worker, or friend? Add a gift card to this Coffee Cup Sleeve to add a personal, handmade touch that is truly as special as the individual receiving it.
Or maybe you just want an eco-friendly, reusable sleeve to protect your fingers from your favorite hot or cold drink? Just slide this onto your favorite standard coffee cup and enjoy! Each verdant green and pumpkin orange Coffee Cup Sleeve is knitted by a Kenyan artisan, embellished with a button and a hand-sewn Grain of Rice Project tag. This way you can share the story of the maker or simply keep the knitter in mind whenever you enjoy the handiwork.
When you purchase one of these sleeves, you are supporting the men and women behind the product by providing them with stable employment in a place where instability reigns, with sustainable wages where anxiety overwhelms, with education and food for their children where healthy options are limited. For more information about Kibera slum and the impact this product makes, check out the About and More sections on this page.
Coffee Cup Sleeve
"Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa, is located in Nairobi, Kenya. It's hard to know exactly how many people live here, but a recent showed that there are approximately 235,000 people in this 1 1/2 kilometer area. The residents live in small, overcrowded shacks that are about 12 x 12 feet. These houses are made of mud and sticks with corrugated tin roofs. There is no indoor plumbing in Kibera and residents must share a toilet (which is a simple hole in the ground) with up to 50 nearby shacks.
"Residents often have to walk far to purchase and collect water, which is carried back to their homes in jerry cans. Electricity has been expanded by the government in recent years, but it is often spotty. In the past, many houses had electricity all wired illegally to one pole, which creates a serious fire hazard.PollutionKibera is extremely polluted. Until recent years, there was no garbage pick-up and now it is inconsistent at best."Trash, food scraps, and even human waste are scattered about everywhere. The garbage leads to huge sanitation and health problems. HIV+/AIDS, teen pregnancy, and unemployment are widespread. Parents struggle to provide basic needs for their families and to afford the fees required to send their children to school.
"And Yet..Despite all of these hardships, Kibera does have a vibrancy and an aliveness to it. There is often loud music spilling out of houses, people making jokes, and entertainment in abundance. Kibera is almost like a small city, in that most basic purchases can be made within the slums. Unless they are employed outside of the slum, it is common for people who live there to only leave occasionally every few months."Handmade in Kenya by Grain of Rice Project
For more about the artisans with Grain of Rice Project, CLICK HERE.
