New Product Video!

Hey Everyone, We got some New Product from Africa! Check it out.

Hey, I'm Edwin

Hey, I'm Edwin and I am the latest addition to Red Earth Trading Co. Being the new guy means that I am here to help with almost every aspect of the organization.

My Red Earth story starts three years ago. After being a full time touring musician for four years, I suddenly found myself without a band and without direction. I decided to spend some time traveling to try to find the path that God had for me. During my travels I met many new people and also became somewhat enamored with the South, particularly with Nashville, TN. One of the people I met was Kerbi, so when I decided to relocate to Nashville from California we became friends.

It didn't take to long for the music industry to pull me back in and I start touring again soon after. Although I did enjoy what I was doing, I found myself once again looking to do something that had more purpose. I went to an event and saw how much dedication Kerbi had to Red Earth, so I decided to find out more about it. All I had to do was sit down once with Travis to know that this was what I had been looking for. Needless to say, God will open doors if you ask him to.

I am very excited and look forward to what God has in store for all of us here at Red Earth Trading Co.


Edwin

Hi! I'm Maggie.

Hey everybody! My name is Maggie and I am the Office Manager here at Red Earth Trading Co.  I help with anything going on around the office or lend a hand in everything from tagging product to setting up house parties.  My main responsibilities are to keep everyone organized, maintain the finances, and work on everything else administrative. 

My story with Red Earth begins quite a while back even though RETCo. is a newer company.  As soon as I graduated from college with a degree in Psychology I had the desire to travel and see new places and learn about different cultures.  I began my travels by taking the excruciating 18 hour flight to Australia with my best friend.  When I returned home, I knew that trip had sparked something in my life that would affect who I was to become.  A few years later I decided to live abroad in Cyprus, a small island in the Mediterranean Sea, where I attended a small discipleship program. From there I traveled to Israel, Germany, and Greece.  All together I was abroad seven months. This trip added fuel to the fire and really ignited my passions for seeing the beauty in cultures and countries other than my own.  I knew that my life would be spent doing whatever I could to help and serve others.

In February 2009, Travis and I met and in October 2009, we were married.  We quickly learned that we shared the same passion for helping others and seeing others lives changed for the better.  I started helping with Global Support Mission and now with Red Earth Trading Co.  Earlier this year we went to Uganda and Kenya for two and a half months.  Even though I had only heard stories about these places, when I got there I felt at home.  I was so moved by the kindness and joy in the hearts of the people that we began to meet and work with.  What I love most about what we do is being able to capture beauty and stories from a different culture and bring that back to the US.  Whether it be the actual jewelry or the story of a persons' life transformed, it makes me really excited to see where this will take us all. 

Maggie
Office Manager

Hello I'm Katie

Hello, my name is Katie!  This is my family, my husband Chris and my two boys Kolby and Logan.  We live in Uganda, Africa working with Global Support Mission as their International Coordinators on the ground.

We have known Travis and been friends with him for many years.  Back in 2007 Chris and I were leading missions trips through our church and we were looking for a place to go that summer.  Travis came down to the coast and we reconnected and he told us about Global Support and we all decided that it would be amazing to go to Uganda and support GSM and the organization, Bringing Hope to the Family, that they were assisting.  So, in July 2007, we came and life as we knew it would never be the same.  While we were on that trip God spoke to us and Travis that we were to come and live in this tiny village in Western Uganda called Kaihura.  When we returned to the States, the journey of shutting down our lives there and working towards setting up our lives here had begun.

In January 2009 our family officially moved to Uganda, and the life unknown was beginning.  Our time here so far has been amazing.  We love working for GSM and we love seeing its vision unfold.  We work here and serve alongside Bringing Hope to the Family doing whatever we can to help them accomplish their vision.  We do that in many different ways.  We work toward helping them create systems and organization.  Through Know.Think.Act we help fullfil their vision toward community development.  The ultimate goal is to get them to be self sufficient through cost reduction and income generating projects.   And this is where Red Earth Trading Co.'s vision comes into play also.

This past summer while Travis, Brady and others were in Uganda RETCO was birthed.  There are so many talented people who can do such incredible things with the local materials that they have available to them.  But, like Travis stated in his blog, there is a very limited market.  So why not help them and help ourselves which will in turn help them even more because more money will just be poured right back in.   It is a win, win, win situation!

RETCO not only has the vision to just help provide a new market for these Artisans, but also help them create new and better product.  So this is where I come in.  Along with the work my husband and I do for GSM, I also have been doing a lot of work for RETCO.  Here in Kaihura, Bringing Hope had a tailoring shop that they set up for income generation and to also create jobs for some of the best students that graduated from their vocational school.  Unfortunately this shop was causing them to lose money rather than make money.  But, this year I have made it a big project of mine on behalf of GSM and RETCO to help them get this business on the right foot.  This is easier said than done, but we have made tremendous headway and I am so pleased at the progress that has been made.  I have worked with them to create many new and better quality products.  Some of these products you can see when you visit a RETCO party or stand.  I am really looking forward to this next year to see what new things come about.  I also work with all the other partners we do business with and they are all so excited and so grateful for this partnership they now have with RETCO.  It is truly a life changer for them.  Thank you so much for supporting us as we do everything we can to support them.  I hope you love and enjoy the products.  There are amazing stories behind them!

stay adventurous>

Katie
East Africa Product Manager

Hey! I'm Katy.

Hello, my name is Katy and I do the photography and product design for Red Earth. My story begins several years ago when I went to Africa with my brother, Travis Gravette. Due to my interest in photography, I was given the assignment of documenting the trip through still photos. I enjoyed every minute of it. I also enjoyed meeting many amazing people and seeing how lives were being changed.

Ever since that trip I have been creatively involved in Global Support Mission and now Red Earth. I majored in Graphic Design Technology and love to work on anything involving the visual arts.  I love playing a part in portraying the essence and beauty of Red Earth to the world. There is lots to be done and this is just the beginning!

Katy

Photographer/Product Designer

Hey, I'm Brady

Hey!  My name is Brady and I'm in charge of pretty much anything media related around here…  My involvement with Global Support Mission (and later Red Earth Trading Co.) began in the winter of 2006.  I was in college and was roommates with Travis Gravette when he told me of an upcoming trip he was planning to Uganda.  So after thinking and praying about it, I decided to tag along.  

At the time I was studying recording engineering outside of Nashville and I was trying to figure out how I could make myself useful and how I could use my talents to further the work of GSM.  Since I naturally gravitate towards all things media, filming ended up being a perfect fit.  So a couple months before we left for Uganda, we bought a camera.  Having rarely even held a video camera before, I started messing around and making short videos around town.  As terrible as most of them were(and trust me, they were terrible…), it gave me a chance to get more familiar with filming and we ended up with over 30 hours of footage from that first trip.  From that point, I was hooked.  

After that first trip, I decided that working for GSM was what I wanted to do full time and over the next three years I  worked towards that goal.  During that time I spent tons of time teaching myself video editing, animation, graphic design and web development.  By early 2010 I was able to stop working side jobs just to scrape by and this allowed me to put all of my energy and efforts towards Global Support.  

Later that year, we created a "Direct-Trade" company called Red Earth Trading Co.  It was something that was birthed naturally from GSM, through the relationships we built and the needs we saw on the ground.  

The way we've set up our operations at RETCo is truly awesome!   Through our sales, we are able to pour 100% of our income back into Global Support and therefore back into the communities that we work in.  This creates a sustainability piece for not only the communities we work in, but also for GSM as a non-profit.  In turn, this allows us to put an even greater amount of our donor's gifts directly towards pressing needs!

All in all, the past few years have been an incredible adventure.  I never could have imagined how difficult it would be, but the challenges pale in comparison to the joy of seeing lives saved and communities transformed!  I can't wait to see where the coming months and years take us!

Brady

You can view our latest RETCo video here.

I'm Kerbi!

                                                      

Hey everybody!

I'm Kerbi. I'm pretty much the new kid at the GSM/Red Earth compound (which is basically a garage that we converted into a cozy little office for our team).

My Red Earth story also started in college. I studied International Business and Entrepreneurship at Belmont University here in Nashville. While taking classes like "Economics of Development," which is all about alleviating poverty, hunger and disease, I really started to hone in on my desire to do the same myself.  I was learning about how microfinance and basic business education were literally changing the world and giving people the opportunity to break free from generations of extreme poverty.

Right after I graduated, I met Travis and we shared our passion and vision to see if they lined up. Obviously they did, and I was immediately on board. Then I met Brady, whom you will meet in the next update, and we all sat down to brainstorm some possible names.  Red Earth Trading Co. was the winner and everything snowballed after that.

Almost a year later, we now have an online store and I am so excited about everything we are planning and working towards in 2011! We have an upcoming trip to Africa to visit the artisans that make our products. This is my first trip over there and I am bursting at the seams to travel with my friends and have my life changed forever.

I am so blessed to be doing work I love. I can only hope that everyone gets the opportunity to do the same.

Thanks for being a part of Red Earth. I hope you enjoy the journey with us.

Kerbi Hickman
Online Coordinator

Hey! My name is Travis.

Hey, my name is Travis.  We wanted to take a few moments and introduce all of us here at Red Earth Trading Co.  Each day this week we'll be releasing a new blog highlighting everyone who is a part of the RETCo. team.  So, here we go!

My RETCo. story starts back in 2004.  I was a college senior at Middle Tennessee State University.  I was finishing up a degree in Music Business, but was already feeling burnt out on the industry.  I decided I wanted to spend my Christmas break volunteering at an orphanage in Africa.  After being told it wasn't a good time to volunteer at several places I had connections, I decided to just google "orphanages in africa" and see what I could find.  Through that random internet search I met a Ugandan women named Faith Kunihira.  She had started a small community based organization called Bringing Hope to the Family.  I decided to fly out to Uganda and spend a month with Faith.  

That one month changed the entire course of my life.  I was a different person when I came back from that trip and knew I had to do something to support people like Faith and the work that they were doing.  A year later I started Global Support Mission.  The idea was to end extreme poverty by supporting local leaders who were already in the fight... we wanted to see A Movement of Compassion Wipe Out Hunger, Disease and Extreme Poverty.  We decided that the best way for us to fulfill our purpose was  to Train, Equip and Resource leaders in developing nations that were already working to end extreme poverty in their own communities... basically, leadership and community development from the inside out.  

From the very beginning of GSM I decided that I wanted us to raise all of our "operational expenses" separately.  This allowed us to develop programs that guaranteed people that 100% of their donations would go directly to the need they were giving to.  This was and still is a big challenge, but something that we have remained true to over the years and will always be a part of how we operate.  

Over the last five years of doing GSM I started developing a lot of relationships with different artisans.  These men and women were so talented.  They were creating incredible products, but had a very limited market to sell them in.  This sparked the idea of Red Earth Trading Co. 

We started RETCo. for two reasons.  First, we wanted to create a company focused on economic development through direct trade and long-term small business partnerships.  Second, we wanted to create a sustainability piece for GSM.   

        

Next to me in the photo above is a guy named Vincent.  He started a small company making jewelry out of cow horns.  He's one of my absolute favorite people ever.  Since starting RETCo. we've purchased over $3,000 worth of product from him.  That may not sound like much to some, but for Vincent it's huge... and we're only getting started!  Not only are we able to expand his market and increase his sales, but we are working with him to grow his business and create even better products... and Vincent is only one of many artisans that we are working with.

I like to create what I call a win, win, win.... and that's what we are doing with RETCo.  We're able to help people like Vincent by creating equitable business partnerships, give people the opportunity to buy and wear great handmade products and then give all of our profits to help sustain the work of Global Support Mission... just writing that makes me smile.

I know this blog sounds more like the RETCo. story than me introducing myself, but the truth is that the RETCo. story IS my story.  It's an expression of who I am and hopefully one day our products might become an expression of who you are.

Compassion = Action,

Travis Gravette
Founder


PS: I like long motorcycle rides in the African bush after a hard days work... it's pretty much my fav.