"In my experience, poor people are the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income."
– MUHAMMAD YUNUS, AUTHOR OF Creating a World Without Poverty
Who We Are: Jobs vs Charity
ABLE is a lifestyle brand focused on ending generational poverty by working with women who have often overcome extraordinary circumstances. We manufacture directly in the communities we wish to impact, both locally and globally, creating jobs and ending the cycle of charity dependency.
Through your purchase, you are ABLE to empower women and give them a job with dignity.
Why We Do It: Invest in a Woman
ABLE chooses to work with women because we know that when women thrive so do the economies in which they operate.
- According to UNICEF, Women reinvest 80 percent of their income into their families, while men invest only 30 to 40 percent.
- The fashion industry is the third largest industrial industry in the world, employing over 60 million people, over 75% of whom are women.
OUR IMPACT: accountABLE
As we have grown with you, our goals have evolved, deepened, and increased in ambition.
This growth has lead to the development of accountABLE, a radical and disruptive reporting system that provides unparalleled transparency into the social impact of our employment and manufacturing practices. Particularly the impact on women.
We want you to know the true impact of your purchase.
SEE WHAT RADICAL & DISRUPTIVE TRANSPARENCY LOOKS LIKE
How We Started
While living in Ethiopia Barrett Ward saw firsthand how extreme poverty forced young women, generation after generation, to resort to prostitution as a means of supporting themselves and their families.
The goal was to provide an alternative that would provide these women with the opportunity to earn a living, empowering them to end the cycle of poverty that kept them trapped. Armed with multiple studies illustrating how the employment of women benefits and strengthens an entire community, the ABLE team set out on a mission to end generational poverty, one job at a time.
Because of your support, ABLE has grown from producing a single collection of hand-woven scarves to a full offering that includes leather goods, hand-made jewelry, denim, and footwear. Whether your purchase is produced in Ethiopia, Mexico, Peru or at our headquarters in Nashville, TN, each item has one thing in common: through working with women, it is leading all of us a step closer to the end of generational poverty. With your help, we are working each day to give opportunity to women in a safe and healthy environment and encouraging our peers to do the same.