Dear Friend of Hope For Women,

As most of you now know, we have partnered with a group of women artisans in El Salvador that are producing our new greeting card line, "Portraits of El Salvador" (now available for purchase on our website, or in stores).

While our goal is to always get fantastic new products to our customers, our perpetual purpose is to provide income and economic stability to women artisan groups, which, in turn, helps the groups expand and grow so that there can be more meaningful jobs for a greater number of women.

For the women in El Salvador, expanding their artisan group is risky. It takes considerable time and resources to train the women and if they do not have a market for the product their investment can be lost.

To take that strain off our new partners, we have put in place a program to engender mutual trust. To demonstrate our commitment and to provide security to the women, we have produced and delivered 50,000 packaging units to their region to be filled with their creations. Currently, there are 12 trained artisans producing 3000 cards per month, so our packaging represents well over a year's worth of stable work. Our packaging commitment is the artisan's security that Hope For Women will be a long-term partner. We anticipate that the group will have the confidence to double in size by 2009, creating life-changing work for more women.