Grains for Change…changing the world one bracelet at a time!

Our story began last year, when 6 of us at Diocesan School for Girls established the Young Enterprise Company, RICE. The team consisted of Harneet Golian, Shalyn Kumar, Cammy Leung Shannon Metcalfe, Jasmine Payne and Hayley (Ling Ling) Yu. The idea came from our passion and eagerness to make a difference even from half way around the world. We decided that RICE would  aim to provide food and sanitation for people living in famine.

This led us to form a partnership with global children’s organization UNICEF NZ In doing so, we dedicated our year to raising funds to support their campaigns in Niger and the Horn of Africa. We did this through the sale of our RICE charity bracelets, inspirational bracelets with a grain of rice written with either love, hope or change inside a miniature glass tube. The rice grain symbolized our fight against global hunger. Numerous hours were spent at markets, presentation events and radio talk shows promoting and selling our charity bracelets.  2011, has been a  very successful year, with us gaining support from Mike McRoberts and The Edge Radio presenters and raising over $600 for UNICEF NZ.

With a new year, comes a fresh beginning. As such, we have rebranded RICE into the new charitable trust Grains for Change. Now made up of 4 directors:  Cammy Leung,  Jasmine Payne, Hayley (Ling Ling) Yu and new member Nick James, Grains for Change aims to fight world hunger one bracelet at a time! In the coming year, we are very excited to continue our partnership with UNICEF NZ and hope to carry on our quest to end world hunger. Look out for upcoming events and new products on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/RiceGrain!