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Industry Celebrates International Women’s Day With Diamonds Helping Women | March 08, 2016 (0 comments)
Merrick, NY—In celebration of International Women’s Day March 8, three industry organizations are highlighting how diamonds help women’s lives, not just their wardrobes.
De Beers’ diamond brand Forevermark proudly supports local employment and career development for women. Women represent 23.8% of The De Beers Group of Companies workforce, compared to 16% in the mining industry as a whole. As a result of several programs designed to develop and retain female talent, De Beers Consolidated Mines was named South Africa’s Top Gender Empowered Resources Company at the Standard Bank Top Women Award last year. Two examples of De Beers’ ongoing commitment to the advancement of women, are the stories of Zimele fund recipient and entrepreneur Sophia Mphuthi and engine operator Alice Mandiwana.
Sophia Mphuthi started her own business as a driving instructor. With the support of De Beers’ Zimele programme, an enterprise development initiative funding and supporting South Africans to build their own successful small to medium enterprise (SME), she was able to extend her driving school based in Kimberley, South Africa, from car to truck driving. She now offers free training to women, opening for them a new world of opportunities.
Above: Sophia Mphuthi teaching a student to drive. Image top of page: students who have succesfully graduated from Mphuthi's driving school. Annie Griffiths photos.
Alice Mandiwana’s story echoes Mphuthi’s. A trained firefighter, Mandiwana couldn’t find employment until she was offered training to become an engine operator at De Beers’ Venetia Mine in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. She received full training to operate off-road haul trucks--impressive engines with a wheelbase of 23 ft 7 in—and she is now one of the mine’s top-performing drivers.
Alice Mandiwana is a trained firefighter and now one of De Beers' best engine operators. Photo: Annie Griffiths
Forevermark chief executive Stephen Lussier said, “Women wearing Forevermark diamonds can take pride in the advancement that our diamonds bring to women living in producing countries. Women play a strategic role in our diamond journey and we are pleased to highlight their important contribution not only in the diamond industry but also in local communities.”
Annie Griffiths, an award winning photojournalist, was interested in how diamonds connected women across vast distances and cultural divides, which she documented in her photographs. “That diamond on your finger has been through an incredible journey, and some incredible women have helped to put it there,” she said.
Visit the Forevermark website to discover Sophia’s and Alice’s story along with Annie Griffiths’ journey and images.
As part of its ongoing efforts to help individuals in diamond-producing nations lift themselves out of poverty, the Diamond Empowerment Fund both provides funding for education initiatives and highlights the good work that other industry organizations do. One of the stories on its Diamonds Do Good website highlights how D.E.F. partner Chow Tai Fook—the world’s largest jeweler, based in Hong Kong—worked together with UNICEF to support women and children in rural China.
A program sponsored by Chow Tai Fook in partnership with UNICEF teaches proper infant care to women in rural China, to help reduce infant mortality rates in areas far removed from medical facilities.
Designer Kara Ross, meanwhile, is so committed to the advancement of women that she shifted her entire business focus from simply creating and selling beautiful jewelry to creating beautiful diamond jewelry that helps support women. Late last year, she closed her wholesale business and founded the Diamonds Unleashed initiative to benefit women. Its two collections—luxury and mainstream—are designed for women to feel comfortable buying themselves, and Ross is donating all her profits after expenses to two organizations that support young women: She’s The First, and Girls Who Code. She’s The First provides scholarships to girls in low-income countries to create first-generation graduates and the next generation of global leaders, while Girls Who Code is a national nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in the technology and engineering sectors and equip [U.S.] high school girls to pursue opportunities in computing fields.
One of several images that Diamonds Unleashed ambassadors are spreading through social media for International Women's Day.
Ross’s Diamonds Unleashed boasts more than 250 highly successful women who serve as “Stilettos On The Ground” ambassadors to help share the organization’s message of female empowerment through their own social media channels.