Episode 120 : Christopher Howell The Pulsera Project

Discover how the simple act of creating and sharing handmade bracelets can bridge cultures and empower communities as we sit down with Christopher Howell, co-founder of the Pulsara Project. Prepare to be inspired by stories that transcend the mere act of buying and selling, revealing the deep connections forged between Central American artisans and students in the United States. From the personal signatures on each bracelet to the sustainable agricultural practices supported by the project, we'll explore how these interactions have a lasting impact on everyone involved.

Join us on a journey of language learning reimagined, where classroom walls are expanded to include the vibrant colors and rich heritage of Central America. Listen to the powerful narratives of educators and students who've been transformed by their engagement with the Pulsara Project, proving that language proficiency and cultural exchanges are key to fostering a global community. Christopher sheds light on how a blend of impact, education, and employment can shape perspectives and encourage deep, meaningful connections beyond our borders.

Wrapping up our discussion, we delve into the humility and solidarity that form the core of the Pulsara Project's mission. By restoring their original pricing strategy, the project stays true to its commitment to accessibility, demonstrating that economic empowerment and education can be balanced effectively. The stories we share today speak volumes about the power of listening to the communities we serve, and the positive ripple effects that can come from a simple, yet purposeful, idea.

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Transcript

Norah JonesHost00:05

So what are the values of language and cultural study and use? Solidarity, humility, self-reflection, thinking in new and non-stereotypical ways about those whose lives and languages are different from our own. These values are ones that you will hear thoroughly in the way that Christopher Howell, co-founder of the Pulsera Project, speaks to us today. In this conversation. He talks about the employment, education and impact components of the project, but especially he talks about the humanity behind language and culture, fully expressed. Enjoy this podcast with my guest, Christopher Howell.

Voice 00:57

Welcome to episode 120 of it's About Language. Today, Norah Jones chats with Chris Howell, co-founder of the Pulsera Project. In 2009, Chris and friends set out to connect Central American artists and communities through handmade bracelets. What started small became a nationwide movement, impacting over 3,700 schools and creating jobs in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Join us for the inspiring story behind the Pulsera Project.

Norah JonesHost01:27

Chris, I'm delighted to welcome you to it's About Language and to be able to share with my listeners worldwide what you've been doing with the Pulsera Project. What I'd really appreciate you doing is telling folks that are listening about who you are, the Pulsera Project in general and, I have to say, from a language and culture point of view. I've got so many questions for you about the way that this project has unfolded to touch lives through language and culture. So let's let folks learn about you and about the project, please.

Chris HowellGuest02:06

Yeah thank you so much, Norah. So I'm Chris Howell. I'm one of the co-founders of the Pulsera Project, and the Pulsera Project is a nonprofit organization or a fair trade nonprofit service learning organization. There's a lot of modifiers in there, but the very basic essentials of what we do is we partner with teachers, students, mostly through Spanish classes, and send what is essentially a fair trade service learning project in a box. It's totally free. What we do is we buy bracelets from Artisans in Central America and then partner with individual teachers to bring this very unique service learning project into schools. We started in 2009. Since then, we've worked with about 3,600 schools. We've done close to 8,000 school sales when we've sold or, better put, students have sold over a million Pulseras, which has created over that many job hours of fair trade employment in Central America.

03:19

And, additionally, one of the things that's most crucial about our project and how it evolved over the years is we originally started selling these bracelets because they were really cool.

03:33

That was basically it. They were cool, handmade, very unique, very representative of the culture, and that was it. It was just a way to buy something and have it go back and benefit someone else in another country. But as we started, as I started really working not just as a volunteer but an employee for the Pulsera project, we realized that there was this amazing connection that we weren't taking full advantage of between the person buying a Pulsera in the States and the artist that made that bracelet. So one of the things that's really cool about our project every Pulsera is tagged with the photo and the signature of the artist that made it. And just in that simple act of buying a bracelet and seeing this is the person behind the product, we realized that was an excellent springboard towards opening people's mind and their sort of understanding of Central America, central American culture and the social issues that we're trying to address by hosting these sales and essentially buying a bracelet. That creates that first sort of connection.

Norah JonesHost04:50

Thank you, and you use the word there, addressing the very social issues, so expand on that. Then this could be just kids selling stuff, and so many of the listeners probably have folks in their family where they've been buying various products from kiddos in order to raise money, and in this case it happens to be connected to Central America. But that social issues aspect tell us more.

Chris HowellGuest05:16

Yeah, so when we first started working with artisans in Central America, a lot of people in Central America have needs, right, so it's the same thing as the United States anywhere else in the world and we sort of intentionally do the nature of our organization we want to work with the people who have the most limited economic opportunities. So just to think of some specific examples, we partner now with a bunch of groups in Guatemala that do all sorts of different things, ranging from we partner with a feminist radio cooperative and they do a lot of really essential work in educating young women and girls in rural Guatemala about their rights as people, what sort of treatment they should tolerate and not tolerate, sort of teaching girls and women to stand up for themselves, to be independent, to develop a lot of these skills that in some cultures can be a little bit more gendered. So that's one example. Another example is we used to work with a cooperative in Northern Nicaragua that most of the people there, the only jobs that were available in their community, were cutting sugar cane, which is extremely physically demanding. It is linked to chronic kidney disease that they can't actually diagnose what's causing it. So for many of our artisans, for a long time, if they weren't cutting sugar cane, they didn't have a job, and what we did was we taught them how to make pulseras and they could in some cases not have to worry about hurting the kidneys anymore by making pulseras and having a little bit more of a relaxed pace.

07:10

But we don't exclusively just work with marginalized people. It's really any group that has similar values to us. So another example we work with a permaculture collective in Guatemala and they are in a very nice spot on Lago Atitlan. It's a very beautiful, beautiful space, but they are doing really amazing work to develop regional capacity and rescue and preserve a lot of these ancestral harvesting practices that their Mayan ancestors have used, that now they're keeping alive and passing on to the next generation. So really, when we talk about our social issues, we work anywhere where we see issues or anywhere where we think that we can make a connection and work with people who are really capable. And that's, I think, one of the big factors too, is we don't just look for people who are sob stories, but they're actually extremely inspiring people that have a lot of good things to share with people and sort of in line with that idea of connecting students with artists. That's what we want to do, is we want to connect students with the coolest people we get to meet in Central America.

Norah JonesHost08:28

Well, that's a great segue to my next question, which is you have spoken about, say, having a tag with a picture of a person so that they know that there's a real human being behind this particular pulsera and, by the way, for those who are not Spanish speakers and my listeners, pulsera is the word in Spanish for bracelet that goes around the area of your pulse, if you happen to be an English speaker and we have, then the students seeing this picture. But it sounds like you have much more of a connection for the students and presumably for their teacher, than this Simple acknowledgement. You have a lot of connection. You've described already that you have. How do you Bring that more to the experience of the students and teachers?

Chris HowellGuest09:18

what ways? Yeah, that's a great question. So you know, we, we want people to participate however much they want to be involved. If they just want to buy a bracelet and they look at the picture the person they say that's great, that's, that's fine with us.

09:32

We have two main resources that sort of go above and beyond that. The first is an artisan website that basically has profiles of I believe now we're up to over two hundred of the artisans. Every artist has a page it has shows what sort of pulsars they make, a brief interview and audio interview video, greeting Map showing where they live. Basically everything we can do to give students of all language proficiency is a sense of these are the people that you're working with, that you're partnering with, and that is has been super crucial and and is sort of like A very easy way to sort of get beyond just that picture on the bracelet.

10:20

But then, in addition to that, we have a ton of educational resources and they are all based on the lives of the artist we work with.

10:28

So, in addition to those other resources, we have more in depth videos that look at, for example, our partners that look at that permaculture organization and the women's, the feminist radio station. Because we want students to really get a sense of who these people are, what the issues are that they're confronting and how are they going about it in this really Unique way. And that's something that I think really comes comes across well and why we create a ton of videos and all these materials because Students can not just see the person, in some cases see where they live, actually essentially walk a day in their shoes, but understand where they're coming from, what, what issues do they confront their life and how are they using their own skill set to overcome them. We think that there's a we very much see that aspect of the project is a two way street, so students really do have a lot to learn from the artists and obviously the artists benefit by these pulsator cells as well.

Norah JonesHost11:39

Nice connection there. Can you tell us some stories of experiences that students and potentially their teachers have had with regard to what they have learned and making these connections and some of the impact on students lives and choices?

Chris HowellGuest12:01

Yeah, so we're. We're so fortunate to have had the chance to work with so many schools and one of the nice things about being it's 2024 now. So this is the pulsator projects 15th year of existence and we're working with schools. Schools are signing up right now, some of whom we've worked with for 10 years or 11 years or 12 years, and to to create those sort of connections and partnerships with teachers that they want to do it year after year is One very encouraging to us. It allows us to continue to expand our mission in our programs, but it also is something that is really born out by continued student interest.

12:50

Just this morning I received an email from a teacher signing up for another sale who said you know, we weren't even thinking about doing a sale this year, but my students really wanted to do it and that's the you know. To me and to us that's like one of the best signs that we're doing something. Well, we hear I had the privilege in November, when I was in Chicago, of actually visiting with a school that's done 11 pulsator cells, lions Township High School, and they go all out every year. They have t-shirts, they do it's a school wide project, and Just having a chance to meet with some of these students and sort of see how, for them, the connections are coming alive and they they buy into it. They don't just, you know, sell the bracelets, but get local businesses involved, get their local you know artists in the class involved in the promotion of the sale. If somebody you know isn't involved with the morning announcements, creating fun little videos and that's one of the real privileges we have is seeing how students will take this project and just make it their own. One of the best signs that our program is as good as we'll have. Students who did the pulsator projects in middle school or high school are now Spanish teachers and are excited to bring that back into their classroom. Or students who go off to college and bring it to college with them.

14:22

And what we hear, you know, consistently from teachers, and one of the main reasons that I wanted to start developing educational programs Is that there's, I feel like all too often in language education at least when I was growing up it was the stress was more on the cultural thing. We would learn about Spain, we would learn about the running of the bulls, we would learn about these cultural events, but but not so much the people and why, how language learning opens you up to this whole new club of individuals that you can all of a sudden interact with and relate to. And that was the aha you know, like both moment for me as a language learner that maybe really want to learn Spanish. So to be able to show kids that this is this matters learning. Learning another language is not just about you know, checking a box for your college application, but it can change the way you see the world, and these people change the way that we see the world, and so we're just so excited to share that, and students really react well to that.

Norah JonesHost15:37

Sounds like they do and that they bring some powerful understandings. And you mentioned, in some of the materials that you have provided for me ahead of time and in our conversations that we've had and that I have for our listeners on my website, fluency dot consulting that, along with the three main components that differentiate it from Other service learning organizations and you've mentioned here the employment Of those, in this case, central America education that has become clear in your conversation here and that the impact on lives and I hope you'll speak more about that as well that you also have some, some key values that are underlying what you're doing. So these three wonderful components have, as a foundation as well, some values. What are those values? How do you see those playing out in what you're doing, in what the educators are doing and what the students are doing, and, potentially, in the impact on the larger community?

Chris HowellGuest16:46

Yeah, that's a great question. You know it's funny, we, when we talk about the three main components, the trace component is what we call them impact, education and employment, and that's always how we've explained the project to other people. The four values you're referring to actually originally were just things that we learned that we wanted to carry with us as we moved through developing this nonprofit. You know, as I mentioned, we none of us had a business plan that we were going to create a national nonprofit organization. It was very much grassroots, very much one step, one blind step to the next, and as we were making that progress, we learned a lot of things about how, service learning, how we kind of approached that wrong, how other people can not necessarily approach it wrong but just can be limited by certain things. So one of our main values is self-awareness, and when we say self-awareness and these are all values, that again we're mostly like guiding posts for us. But eventually we realized actually this this might help other people too. But being being aware of how our own biases, our own preconceived ideas about another country or a people, can actually hinder our capacity to connect with people. If you see someone and you say, oh, this person's Guatemalan. They're poor. You're already putting a bunch of values onto that and we try to be really self-aware so that we're bringing as little to the table as possible and also aware of how our own actions impact other people. Another core value is solidarity, and that one is really more easy to understand and it kind of goes hand in hand with self-awareness. We see our partnership with any of the artists, the leaders we work with, it is 100% a 50-50 horizontal relationship and that is really important for us. And same thing with the partnership for the students. We want the students to think you're not just helping someone else out, but you're also getting something in return through this education.

19:15

And then we really, as we were spending time down there, realizing that we had preconceptions about poverty. We had this idea of in our country we think of poverty as an economic metric You're rich, you have a lot of money, you're poor, you don't have a lot of money. And one thing that we learned is that there's different levels, there's different metrics that you can base poverty on. There's community poverty, there's a poverty of the spirit that even in these economically impoverished communities people don't have. That People are very connected. They have this very full sense of family, sense of community, and so to sort of push back on the idea that we're just helping out poor people, let's think about the different ways in which we are well off and also poor, and that helps destigmatize that as well.

20:18

And through all of that runs this really important strain of humility. I think that captures everything that we do. It is kind of a in some ways a selfish act to say I'm going to go into the world and change it, I'm going to make it different, I'm going to make it better, and when that becomes all about the person who's doing the change, you can really lose your way, because we're not doing this for ourselves. We're trying to make the world better through partnership, through collaboration, through mutualism, and the more humility that everyone brings to the table in that, the better off you're going to be. So that's sort of what we in a nutshell humility, self-awareness, solidarity and thinking about poverty differently. That informs not only how we develop our educational resources but everything that we do within the project as well.

Norah JonesHost21:20

You mentioned that it's found those four wonderful values that you've just described are foundational to how you have done your work. But you've also, if I understand correctly, have said that you kind of lifted the curtain a little bit, made sure that those are things that the participants also see. And, if so, do you hope that, through experience and potentially labeling what has been experienced with these values, that they are understood, or do you have ways in which you are proactively helping participants to understand that these values exist, that they are underlying what you're doing and that they're worthy of emulation in their lives and how to go about it?

Chris HowellGuest22:12

One of the hard parts about what we do is that there's already a very strong, good, developed ethic in our country about service, and international service in particular. There's lots of people go on mission trips, lots of people go abroad to do something or they'll work locally to have a global impact. And we didn't want even though we ourselves had walked our meandering walk, making errors, making pit stops, tripping and falling, stumbling every once in a while, and to not come across as we are above you, because we're not. We are just people who have made some mistakes and we would like other people to learn from the mistakes that we've made and hopefully, if there's other organizations out there that can help us avoid some of the mistakes they've made, we can keep doing that, because that really is what it's about. It's not about criticizing that impulse for service or about criticizing the fact that people do want the world to be better. Obviously, that's what we want too. That's why we do this, this work. But to recognize that intention, the intent of doing good, is not enough. That was one of the hardest, most bitter pills we had to swallow. Is that, even though we might have the best of intentions, and we have all of this, all these resources, all this knowledge we can bring to bear. If you don't really work diligently, you can make mistakes and you can essentially misallocate funds and misallocate where you're focusing.

23:58

Just a quick example of that when we were first working in Central America, we worked primarily with a very again marginally economically marginalized population, and we had a very clear sense of what they needed. We were really trying to give them just more and more money. Essentially, we figured if their wages are good enough, they'll be able to save and have the sort of economic mobility that we value so much in the United States for good reason, because people want to be able to create a better life for their children. And what we learned was that, no matter how much we gave them a bonus our artisans or what the actual numbers were because of how much need there is and the way that communities are structured in Nicaragua, if somebody has an extra $150 one month, they're not going to set it aside because they have family members or friends or people in their community that need that urgently. And while that urgent need is good that people can address that, our goal again is creating some sort of economic uplift.

25:14

And after we talked to a bunch of the artists and really developed a program where we could understand what are your needs, according to you, in your own terms, not according to our values. What are your needs? And that led to the creation of our housing program, because a lot of people in Central America do not have a clean title to their house. If they own it, if they rent, they don't have any clear provisions that sort of keep them in their place If their landlord wants to evict them. They can do that.

25:48

So we partnered with a law firm and a few different construction groups to obtain clean titles, give people the land and the material resources if needed so that they could build a sturdy home and that really, for a lot of those people, fundamentally changed the way that their life worked. Because if you have a solid roof over your head and four solid walls, that's a really big step and you know that no one's going to come to evict you at any point in time. That provides a lot of security. So that's just one example of how our preconceived notions really weren't didn't really pay off and it wasn't until we had those conversations that we really benefited from that knowledge.

Norah JonesHost26:37

Wow, what an impressive story. And here you are, listening with that humility, listening to how to think about what the needs are. We've got the word poverty there in that initial value, but the needs are articulated. This has been an interesting row that you have developed. Then You've talked about falling and picking yourselves up, discovering these pathways. How have you and the team that you work with helped others to understand what the project is about through the lens of how you've come about learning these things and the obviously grown impact that you have on people's lives? What do you do to share some of these pathways to those who may be considering this kind of concept but also don't know where to start and could use this kind of vision and heads up in support?

Chris HowellGuest27:43

Yeah, our main mechanism for that is our, first and foremost, just publishing. These are the values that inform our project and we've written about them. They underline all of the educational resources we have, but in our Color the World video, which is just a 10-minute video about the Pulsarra project, our mission, what it is that we do, that is the space where we really, I think, do the most, to be very upfront, that we started this project with certain ideas and learned quickly, but not perfectly, that we needed to really change our approach, as we say in the video, just that idea of constantly challenging your assumptions, constantly challenging the work that you're doing. That enables you to do better. Because even if you spend 10, 20 hours deciding if you want to change the displays, for example, we send these big displays to every school and every year we spend time thinking about if we can replace or change them. Every year we decide not to because they work really well, but we have to have that conversation every year because that's what allows us to do a better project. There might be a year where it actually will make sense to change things up.

29:16

It's really about conveying to anyone else that wants to do something like this, like the Pulsarra project, that you have to communicate. You have to be drawing as much from the people that you're trying to help and work with in every aspect, every stakeholder, because everybody involved in a nonprofit entity is a stakeholder. What the students want in the US, what the teachers want, what the artisans want, these are all things that we have to consider. You can't consider them if you don't talk, if you don't open up that dialogue process. That's really something we stress with all of our sales. When we do class talks or whatever, I'm always relating one or two anecdotes of our foibles and follies from the past. That I think help people relate and understand that we're not coming down from on high saying that we have all the answers because we don't. We just have some really good practices that help make that process of finding the answers a little bit more straightforward.

Norah JonesHost30:26

That's fantastic that you do indeed share it. Thinking about the people that you have met, the artisans in particular here I'm looking for do you have a story of one or more individuals that have inspired you in their work, in their attitude and in their connection to you through the Pulsera project and to students through the project as well?

Chris HowellGuest30:56

Yeah, absolutely. It's almost hard to think of one specific example and not immediately be flooded with a million different ideas. One example would be the permaculture cooperative that I was talking about Not just them, but another group we worked with up in La Rendaad in Nicaragua. They also were a farming cooperative. To sit down with someone who lives in a completely different part of the world, has on paper maybe a high school education, then to hear them talk about their environment, their farm, the wildlife around them, even the wildlife that has no pertinence to their economic activities, but to just have such wisdom and experience and expertise, is truly humbling. When we say humility was one of our values, it's not that that's what we were looking for, although it is always good to be humble. But when you encounter someone like Sebastian from La Rendaad or Jonathan from EMAAP or Enes from EMAAP, they are just so knowledgeable and wise. It really challenges those bedrock assumptions you have about what is education, what is knowing, your community. These people have a sense that transcends the human and transcends to this spiritual level almost. I think that's really inspiring.

32:36

We work with a lot of indigenous women, women that come from very rough backgrounds that I as a man can't even really relate to.

32:46

But again, seeing their perseverance and the fact that for them, it's their obstacles that they have to be overcome, rather than these massive roadblocks in their lives, that sort of attitude is just so inspiring. Then, as well, we work with a lot of people In Guatemala. There's a huge push, especially among young people, to come to the United States or emigrate, go elsewhere. While we support people's right to seek a better life for themselves, we think that it's better if people can do that in their own community. Really working with a lot of people, who maybe are one friend, willie, he came to the United States, lived for over a decade and now lives back in his hometown in Guatemala and tries to discourage people from going abroad and to build more routes to build a better community where they are. That's something that, again, with all of the economic pressures that are pushing people out of the country, pushing people afield, to see these people and the work that they're taking upon themselves to build restore, enhance that sense of community. It's extremely humbling and exciting to see too as well.

Norah JonesHost34:15

Inspiring. Thank you for sharing those quick stories that have so much humanity behind them. Chris, appreciate that. One of the things that I said near the beginning of the podcast was that if we're not careful in our discussions, sometimes when we see, say, businesses at exhibits and conferences and so forth, we may see just a superficial type of experience, and that the listeners would discover that this was far more than colored, wonderful, beautiful bracelets. You've spoken so articulately about these various issues and about the growth of the impact. Help the listeners to understand your personal background, your trajectory in life that leads you to this being where you are right now, and some of the things that you continue to plan to do, and potentially with some of the other employees, team members I almost want to keep calling them here of Fulsera do. But really you, when starting to start with you, what makes Chris Howell like this, wanting these kinds of stories and results to come forward?

Chris HowellGuest35:32

Well, it's funny you asked that because I was just visiting a really good friend who I went to college with and we both one of the first things we did. One of the first things we did in our time with the Fulsera project was we made a documentary about the Fulsera project. My buddy, tom LaFay, who is an amazing photojournalist. He lives in Bogota, colombia. He's actually battling testicular cancer right now, but I just visited him and we were talking a lot about college, about sort of we would, we'd watch these documentaries, and we had this very clear sense that we wanted to go and do something in the world to make it better and to educate people, because we were learning all this new stuff and we wanted to share that as well. And it was really just a coincidence One of my very good friends, him and his family, were going to Nicaragua on this trip. They needed someone who spoke Spanish better than them.

36:35

I barely fit the bill, I barely qualified on that score and I managed to go down and it really was with a truly, I would say, very youthful sense of just. I want to make the world better, walking, getting outside of my bubble, the bubble that I grew up in. I studied abroad in Cuba with my friend Tom in 2009, and that really because it was not only a different language but a totally different political culture and economic culture, and that really opened my eyes and I said, okay, there's a whole big world out there and I want to see as much of it as I can and hopefully help some people too. And so when I was invited on that Nicaragua trip the first time, it was really just hey, these bracelets are fun and they're cool. Nothing was with the long-term vision of I'm going to do this after school. You know, after college, this is going to be my career.

Chris HowellGuest37:39

It was just this is really fun.

Chris HowellGuest37:41

We were going down to Nicaragua. We were spending a lot of time with these young people. It was really engaging and fun, and as I got closer to the end of college and started contemplating what I wanted to do with my life, I realized that this was the ideal forum for that. Really, because we had, you know, it was a blank canvas. The Pulsera project had worked with 69 schools at that point and I think it was like 13 states Maybe it was more than that, but I still remember vividly that Colin, my friend, and I, who started working right out of college, we put a big map on the wall with all 50 states and we colored in the ones that had hosted sales and we wanted to get to all 50 states. And you know, when you jump cut to 2024 and all of a sudden we are working in all 50 states. We've worked with 3,600 schools and you know we're hoping to work with around 1,000 schools this year.

38:42

How we got from A to B, you know, in that 15 years has been a long, long process and it's, you know again, certainly has not been straightforward. Covid really disrupted things. We've had some political economic situations in Central America that have disrupted things, but throughout all of it, it was this clear sense that we can actually do something to help some people. It might not be, you know, it's not about changing the world, it's just. This is something that I believe in so fully that it's really hard to imagine doing anything else, and that's because much of my values, much of the values we've developed, have really informed how I see my life in general. So, yeah, a big, big part of my identity is tied up in this work and that's because I've developed it. I've grown up through working for this project in many ways.

Norah JonesHost39:48

When you think of your new little son. How old is your son now?

Chris HowellGuest39:53

He will be 10 months tomorrow 10 months tomorrow.

Norah JonesHost39:57

Fantastic Congratulations again to your new family member. And when you look at him and you think about how you want to talk with him, about how he finds these pathways into the world, what are some of the pieces of advice or what are some of the things that you want to demonstrate and explain to him? So we can personalize a little bit what you are demonstrating and explaining also to the world at large. When you look at him, how are you going to let him know what's important?

Chris HowellGuest40:39

When am I going to take him to Guatemala for the first time? Where did Nicaragua for the first time? And I thought for a while that it wouldn't be until he was old enough to appreciate it, whatever that like 10, 15 years old. But the more that I think about it, the more I wish I had been exposed to a lot of these people that I've met through the Pulsera project earlier in life. I think that's one of the things and one of the reasons I believe so fully in what we do is that every time I have a conversation with these artisans or I just share a coffee or have some food with them, there is a truly refreshing insight from their unique perspective. You see a lot of people.

41:26

In whatever community you live in, it's limited by who you're around and the ideas that are conveyed there. But then when you step into another country and you step into a world where the realities are just so different, there's a lot of opportunity to learn and to challenge again. You can't really challenge the air around you with the water. You can't change the water you swim in or challenge the thinking, the thought processes you have until you step outside of them. So that's something I really want to encourage with Conrad is getting outside of your comfort zone is something that we always one of the old Pulsera project models was learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and I think that's another thing.

42:17

That is just. It's really important. It's increasingly important in today's world where we are, thanks to technology, aware of so much of the bad things that are going on in the world and the good things, and that that's double edge, because, on the one hand, you have this awareness, you can learn more, ideally do more, but in a lot of cases, there isn't that clear call to action, there isn't a clear way that you can actually make a difference, and so that's really important. It's another thing that I like about what we do is that, even though it's a small slice of the pie, it's a very clear call to action. This is what you can do. That will, you know, change things for in a small way.

Norah JonesHost43:02

Indeed it is. Thank you, Chris. Now what? What are some of the things about the project or encouragements to individuals or to groups for the future? Where are you headed with the Pulsera project and what are some of the things that you would love people to know about in to take it action on in their own lives? If at all possible, combine those two, please.

Chris HowellGuest43:32

Yeah. So one of the things that we're really excited about actually is once again acknowledging that we messed up and we made an error. In 2022, as we were recovering from COVID, dealing with a move to a new new countries in Central America where the standard of living is higher we basically we took a look at things and we decided that we were going to raise our prices. Pulseras have always been $5, which is a great deal. We always thought it was a great deal and we raised them to $7 because, honestly, $7 is still a pretty good deal for some of these bracelets, especially being fair trade and all the other the other things we do. And after a year and a half of that, based on feedback from teachers, from students, from from just seeing how the sales were going, we realized that we were selling fewer Pulseras and to us, that was a really big no. No, like I said earlier, you know we have three main programs education, employment and impact, and education and employment are basically tied together in Pulsera sales. One student buys a Pulsera. That's a Pulsera they bought from Artisan. They've learned something, the artist has received an economic benefit. So it's kind of like a win, win, win and we decided early this year that we wanted to change the prices back to $5 and to keep them at $5, moving forward, because of accessibility.

45:07

You know, we heard from a lot of teachers who would sell 200, 250, maybe even just 100 Pulseras of school, which for us is totally fine because we want to work with every type of school. We work with a lot of Title I schools. They're not gonna sell 500 pulseras, but they might sell 100 or 75. And at $7, a lot of these schools were selling even less than that and we just kind of took a really hard look at ourselves and said do we want this project? What is this project about? What's the spirit of the pulsera project? And accessibility has always been one of the biggest things. So by returning to the $5 price we should be able to employ about twice as many people. We should be able to educate about twice as many people, because they'll be participating in the sales in the US. And how it affects our bottom line is we'll have a little bit less as a percentage for those impact investments.

46:10

But in our experience, giving people good jobs and providing them with the support that we create through the housing program, through the different programs I've outlined, that's the best thing that we do. It's the best thing we can do and it's already. I think we work with about 210 artisans as of right now, but that number could go up and the actual number of people that are part of family is where there's a pulsera maker earning income. The actual impact of that education or employment sector or the project is over a thousand people. It's a huge, huge part of what we do.

46:53

So we're really excited about changing that back, once again with a lot of humility, because we thought it was gonna work at $7 and it just wasn't as fun. So we've made the readjustments and we're really excited to work with new and returning schools, because $5 is just, it's nice and easy. There's a $5 bill. You can buy four for 20,. You can do the math, counting the returns, really easily. So we're excited about that and we're really hoping that by lowering the prices, that we'll be able to work with even more schools and just partner with as many people as possible.

Norah JonesHost47:34

And watch what unfolds from that and that's a real active humility right there and it's neat to be able to hear in your voice the excitement of making that change back and watching the energy rise back up. That's really neat. Chris, what about this project, about the nature of the project in general, more generalized if you wish, do you want to make sure that you have said to the listeners, before we end today, what would you like to make sure they hear again, or what do you feel that they have not yet heard or should really remember for their own lives, based on our conversation today and what you hope for them? 

Chris HowellGuest48:25

Good question. I think one of the things that I learned actually exhibiting at a conference with a former teacher who's on our board and a really dear friend, obviously, of the Pulsera project. She was explaining to other teachers that this project can be as much or as little as teachers want it to be. We work with a lot of teachers that every year it's the fun bracelet project. It's colorful and that's it, and then some teachers incorporate some of the lessons into their class. Some teachers will have us talk to their students, we'll have our other teammates talk to their students and really dive deep. But the project works sort of all a cart how people want, and that's one of the things I think is one of our strengths, in addition to the project being free, really easy to sign up for and the fact that we just make it as easy as possible for teachers, because teachers are busy and we really do try to take all of the guesswork, all of the complicated paperwork and everything else out of their hands so we can sort of focus on the fun stuff.

Norah JonesHost49:38

That's great and that's a real marker for people that may be interested in doing good in the world and understanding how you kind of grease the rails, as it were, to make sure that things are easy for those that would like to help on the way to making a big difference in the world. Well, Chris Howell, thank you so much for describing the Pulsera project in detail, your experience with it, the background and the wonderful impact, mutual impact on all of those that are participating, from an educational and economic and world life impact point of view. Appreciate your sharing all of that today with us.

Chris HowellGuest50:22

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. It's always great talking to you and we're grateful for the opportunity.

Norah JonesHost50:28

Glad to have you. Thank you, Chris, and take care. Thanks for listening to this podcast with my guest, Christopher Howell. I hope that you, too, have had a chance to reflect on the solidarity, humility, self-reflection and non-stereotypical thinking that is part of your experience of language and culture. Please do check out my website, fluency.consulting, for more information about Christopher and about the Pulsera project, and I wish you well in all the projects of your life based on language and cultural understanding. Until next time.