"India broke my heart, but it set it alight too..." - Kimberley Abbott, Founder of Roka

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In July 2012, Kimberley Abbott, an engineering student, and Brenda Shayeb, a nursing student, volunteered in India for one month with The 40K Foundation Australia. Whilst in India, alongside volunteering in the 40K PLUS education pods, they realised that there was a largely underused resource within the villages, one of the most underused resources in the world: women. the girls took up a challenge to try and find an alternate stream of income for the people of the Bangalore quarries. These people in the quarries work 12hrs a day, 6 days a week, doing back breaking work cutting granite blocks by hand, and they earn only $1.50 a day. The idea was to utilise the granite they mine in a more profitable way. When they mine granite they cut large blocks which are used as bricks, the smaller rocks then get crushed for use as road base, and whats left is a fine granite powder which is swept up off the quarry floor every week and trucked off to be dumped by a river as waste. They thought, what if we could use this 'waste' to create a product that could be made by the women, providing them with economic empowerment and personal pride.

They came up with Roka. A social enterprise where the 'waste' granite dust is mixed to make a clay which is coloured, using natural Indian powders, then made into beads and pendants which are then used to make jewellery and items to be sold.

 

Roka employs Indian women, providing them with economic empowerment & personal pride, & as a result they are able to subsidise the running of 40K PLUS education pods, to provide literacy, numeracy, & life-skills education to their children, & all the children in the villages.

Through the 40K Group, and partnerships with Australian Universities and TAFES, 'Roka Projects' are run which empower young Australian's to be a part of social change. They learn about social entrepreneurship & about the potential to make a difference. The idea with Roka Projects is to train up young people in addressing social issues through an entrepreneurial lens, & to utilise their collective knowledge to impact real change.