BoffBand Hair ties: How it all started?
After a two week trip of service in Kenya, life felt different... It was like my eyes opened to layers of reality I couldn't see before.
So getting back from it, we knew we could and we had to do more. Some of my travel companions and I decided to create a Resident Intern Program between Kenya & USA, connecting AYP (Africa Yoga Project) with yoga studios in the US. The very first intern came to NYC on a four week program in January 2015, his name is James Mweu.
Laughing Lotus NYC hosted the internship and kindly offered many yoga workshops to the intern, believing that what he learns here, he will teach back in Kenya - in just one month and through only one person, many could learn much more. They would have a better practice and broader knowledge of yoga besides the motivation that a chance to get out of the slums and travel around the world for education is possible to any of them.
That’s when BoffBand hair ties were created! It was from the need to raise funds to sponsor this internship that I realized I could take advantage of the freelance schedule and use some of my time to produce the hair ties, since it is a simple and fun process to manicure them. The inspiration of the initial colors came from the title of the trip I originally did to Kenya (Seva Safari) but soon we expand to additional colors to attract more and more people.
Raising funds can be hard and somehow uncomfortable, so BoffBand hair ties were also created to help solve this issue and most importantly, it would be used as a returned gift to the supporters. The love would go all the way around, by giving and receiving on both parts involved.
Well, long story short….. these cute hair ties (which are also good looking as bracelets) called BoffBand had raised enough money to cover all cost of James’ residency. For only $2 dollars a piece (which seems so little, right?!), we were able to accomplish beautiful results, such as this.
The lesson here was certainly that when we come together there is no impossible task, making it easier to say "yes, we can!".
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, you haven’t spent the night with a mosquito.”
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”