Pebble

Starting with a small handful of knitters in Bangladesh at its outset, Pebble has grown into a sustainable, fair trade enterprise that has been cited as a model of development for poor, rural women. Rural communities in Bangladesh had become overly dependent on their surrounding natural resources as the onslaught of globalization seemingly passed them by.  Subsistence extraction from neighboring wetlands, forests, and waterways threatened the local environment and therein the lives of people dependent on these spaces.  To combat the resulting deforestation and environmental degradation, Pebble works with rural Bangladeshi women providing them with job skills and a sustainable income to support their families. Growing their operations to work with over 2000 women, the organization has been cited and awarded by the Clinton Foundation, the British Queen, and MIT “as an example of how to create good quality employment for the young, illiterate, unskilled women of rural Bangladesh at scale.”