HALIFAX – Barb Stegemann and Amber MacArthur are launching a new social media campaign with the ultimate goal of making the world a better place.
The campaign “Make Perfume Not War” is asking people to take pictures of themselves with a poster, changing the word “perfume” to a word of their choice. Some words used already include “diplomacy”, “wealth”, and “patchouli oil” from a Rawandan farmer who makes the oil for the perfume.
The campaign aimed at getting more people to talk about peace.
Stegemann runs a perfume company called 7 Virtues, which makes perfume using ingredients bought from developing countries. Its latest perfume from features patchouli oil from a farm in Rwanda that says 80 per cent of its employees are adult orphans or widows of the genocide in 1994. 7 Virtues is a fair-trade company — it deals directly with small-scale third world farmers — and donates a portion of its proceeds to charity.
Stegemann also hopes to spread the message that world peace can be achieved by supporting developing and war-torn countries.
“It helps to make more buyers to buy from our suppliers in Afgahnistan, in the Middle East, in Rwanda,” she said.
She hopes the campaign will “bring a calvary of businesses to come and trade with these nations.”
Stegemann chose Rwanda as a supplier not only because of the work they are doing to recover from the genocide 20 years ago, but also because of the government’s take on diversity and representation. She hopes “other countries can start to look at this model of diplomacy that this country is leading on.”
Rwanda is the only government in the world with a female majority in government.
MacArthur is a media professional and social media expert, and is offering her expertise to the campaign.
People can join the campaign by downloading the poster below and tweeting a picture of themselves with it using the hashtag #MakePerfumeNotWar.
Download the poster below:
(Click ‘Download’ and open the poster in a program such as Adobe Acrobat Reader to print.)
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