Gifts For Mom

We have recommended fashionABLE scarves on the blog before, and there is good reason for suggesting it again as the perfect Mother’s Day gift. These beautifully light-weight scarves are not simply accessories to add to your closet. FashionABLE works with impoverished women in Africa to help them start small business cooperatives thereby providing employment opportunities and fair wages. Scarves start at $36.00, variety of patterns and colours.

Designer Joy Cho designed a limited-edition diaper bag in her signature patterns for FEED. Each environmentally friendly, fair-labor production bag is artisan crafted and with each bag purchased a portion of the proceeds goes to feeding populations around the world. Has your mom retired the diaper bag? There are many more stylish, functional bags to choose from. Put a smile on her face, and food in a belly for as little as $22.00.

Supermodel Christy Turlington is doing super work. After experiencing complications during the birth of her first child, Turlington made it her mission to learn about maternal health in third-world countries. What she discovered propelled her to create Every Mother Counts a charity dedicated to improving the lives of women and children, including in the United States. Every Mother Counts has partnered with several companies, like Ergobaby, Jawbone and The Pajama Company. Buy a gift for your mother through their website and these companies will make direct donations to Every Mother Counts.

Check out some of the amazing things on offer from the Far and Wide Collective, a fair-trade on-line marketplace for artisan in post-conflict and emerging economies. It is the brainchild of founder Hedvig Christine Alexander, who spent seven years in Afghanistan working in international development. During her time in Afghanistan and traveling in the region, she saw how even the most talented craftswomen and men were unable to connect with buyers abroad. Consequently, they could not benefit from the increased demand for beautiful, authentic, and handmade items in recent years. As current online retail business models largely exclude emerging-market craft producers, Hedvig Christine decided to create an online market place that would focus entirely on bringing a new segment of makers to the international market. Far & Wide Collective is a result of this.

The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood edited by Kerry Clare

We went to the launch last week, and we will be writing about this book at the end of the month, but we cannot recommend this collection of essays highly enough. These are, truly, conversation-starting pieces about motherhood, in all its guises and for all who yearn for or shudder at the thought of it.