Our Story

JAbU started organically out of a series of ideas, luck, and happenstance.

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Katie Walters served in the Peace Corps in Swaziland from June 2012-November 2014. In that time, she developed what she knew were lifelong friendships. Katie organized libraries, wrote school curricula, taught in schools, and worked with girls' and boys' groups. She spent the majority of her two and a half years on a children's home in eKufikeni, a village in the Hhohho region of Swaziland. It was there, living with the amazing children and building relationships with the management and staff, that she realized the kind of help people most need in rural Swaziland was help she was neither educated nor certified to give. 

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So, when Katie completed her Peace Corps service and left Swaziland, she entered a graduate school program at the University of Iowa to get her LMSW so she could be a child therapist. She had a dream of someday opening a counseling center in rural Swaziland. A dream we are watching come true today. 

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In order to make it happen, however, Katie knew she needed money. She started off by asking friends and family and her church community for contributions, but knew, despite their enthusiasm and generosity, such a small resource pool could only take her so far. Click here to find out how JAbU became a fair-trade organization!