Rising International

Santa Cruz, California

Our Mission

Our Unique Local-Global Solution Rising International is a nonprofit organization that has revolutionized the home party business model to alleviate poverty locally and globally. Think Avon or Tupperware for a social cause. We find the worldâ€™s most forgotten women (like Fatima) and enable them to change their destinies by selling their handmade crafts at Rising Home and Corporate Parties. We train women and teens, many un-employed or under- employed, (like Susana) to run their own Rising Home Party businesses and sell crafts made by their global sisters. We search the U.S. for party hosts (like Nancy) who invite friends to their homes to shop. Our sustainable model empowers both local and global entrepreneurs to rise above their circumstances.

Who We Are

fter reading an article about women's lives under the Taliban in Afghanistan, Rising's founder, Carmel Jud, hosted the first home party in her living room on May 11th, 2002. Soon after, Jud sold the majority of her possessions and moved into a barn so she could volunteer her time to start Rising International. Her first country was Afghanistan. When the Taliban took control in 1996, it forbade women from working, attending school, even leaving the house without a close male relative. Women like Fatima were left as the powerless sole providers for their family. Rising gave them hope. Today, Rising reaches women in over twenty of the most brutal places in the world to be female. These mothers and daughters are survivors of the most severe circumstances: human trafficking, war, refugee camps, gender-based violence, and disabilities. Yet they create objects of remarkable beauty.