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To our amazing customers,
From the beginning of 31 Bits, our mission has been about long-lasting change. It’s been about using employment and education to provide empowerment and autonomy. That's why no matter where we work, we always have an exit strategy in place. That way when the time comes to leave, we won't be missed.
So here's the big news: after more than a decade in Uganda and graduating more than 150 Ugandan women out of our program, the time has come for us to leave and we've closed our operations in that beautiful community. Of course, before we left we supported the program until all of the current artisans had graduated.
We’ve always been transparent with our customers, so here’s why we've made this decision: as styles and trends have become more minimal, we’ve used less and less of the paper beads created in Uganda.
Without using that material in large volumes, supporting our program there actually becomes counter-productive: it makes Ugandans unsustainably dependent on us instead of autonomous, and it reduces our ability to scale our business to maximize our worldwide impact.
Speaking of worldwide impact, we know this is only the beginning of our story, and rest assured, nothing about our mission has changed.
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