It’s a new year and we’re excited to share what’s happening in 2024!
But first, we’d like to say hello to the many new friends we’ve made in recent months. Thank you for purchasing candles and gifts that do so much good in the world. Because of you, Prosperity Candle continues to deliver on its mission to help refugees resettled in the U.S. and escaping violence overseas.
A little about us
Our journey began in 2010 when three friends launched a social enterprise to provide economic opportunity to women entrepreneurs in regions of conflict. The first project was in Baghdad where 50 war widows learned to make candles for local and international markets.
Since then, Prosperity Candle has helped create a women’s artisan cooperative in Haiti and supported its sister nonprofit in other regions impacted by violence. And we’ve partnered with organizations delivering medical aid, shelter and food to families in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Ukraine. Every purchase supports these critical programs, including one of our first Haitian candles.
Here in the U.S., we provide living wage employment to women resettled in western Massachusetts through federal and state programs. They come from places like the Congo having survived in refugee camps for as many as 17 years before an opportunity to relocate arises. We’ve also supported meals for hungry families through Feeding America, and donated PPE to local hospitals during the pandemic.
What has all this amounted to?
We’re a small team with a big heart that has poured over half a million candles entirely by hand. And we’re unique in that many of our designs are pour-to-order, meaning we make your candle specially for you in the design and scent you select. We also make custom candles and gifts for companies like Google, Paramount Studios and Pfizer, as well as for numerous small businesses and nonprofits.
We love it all because this has enabled us to:
- pay over $1.1 million in living wages to women artisans resettled in the U.S. from refugee camps
- donate $110,000 to organizations providing critical medical aid to refugee families around world, and nonprofits supporting poverty alleviation and social justice worldwide
- provide 82,000 meals to food banks across the U.S. through Feeding America
- train and invest in hundreds of women entrepreneurs in Iraq, Haiti and elsewhere through our sister nonprofit and own projects
- support thousands of fair trade artisans in dozens of countries with purchases of their handicrafts
What’s ahead in 2024
You may know that Prosperity Candle is B Corp certified for social and environmental sustainability, a designation we are proud to share with the likes of Patagonia, Athleta and The Body Shop.
What you may not have heard about is our goal to be the most sustainable producer of handmade candles anywhere. It began last year with our move into a new, energy efficient studio designed to reduce our carbon footprint in every way possible. The move itself was crazy (equivalent of 6 homes and 18 truckloads over 9 days), but creating a space that is beautiful and infinitely more efficient has been fun.
We’re still unpacking and settling in, but are really excited about what comes next. In addition to expanding our collections to include bath salts, sugar scrubs and tote bags, we’re exploring handcrafted soaps, new diffusers and room sprays, wickless wax warmers, and unique accessories from fair trade artisans.
And we’re designing new candles, of course! It’s one of the many joys of doing what we do because it’s both creative and means we can increase our impact on the lives of refugees. We are so grateful to our customers and look forward to sharing more news and behind-the-scenes images of our new studio in the year ahead.
Here's to an exciting 2024!
