Congrats Bloggurl on winning!

This is sponsored by 7 Loaves. They have donated a unique slatted purse handcrafted in Ghana from wood. It is beautiful, see the attached pictures for the detail. Some are from their site, as the pictures I took don’t do it justice! Visit the purse at the 7 Loaves site here.

The owners of 7 Loaves send me wonderful bit of history on the purse, the couple that makes that purse live in Accra, Ghana, where we met them last September. Their story is on the tag obviously, but it is much deeper than that. My wife and I, and our product team leader, met them on an insight trip with Opportunity International, a micro finance organization that provides loans to the “entrepreneurial poor” in 3rd world countries. These are people that want to work, but need a “hand up” versus a hand out…this particular couple was i recall on their 13th loan cycle, and have been able to send their kids to school, build a “new” house instead of living in a shack, and employ over 7 people…so it is not just a beautiful purse, but a symbol of sustained hard work, mostly for the sake of their kids and their education, which gives them hope of a better future outside of slum living

It makes the purse that much more special. And you can win it for yourself, your wife, a friend, anyone. It is a super easy contest with a few different ways to enter. You can get multiple entries by doing various things (see below). The contest will end on August 31st, 18 days from now. The winner will be chosen at random, as a drawing, so the more entries you get the better your chances!

Ok, You want to know how to enter right? There are several things you can do for entries.

• Post about the contest on your blog, with a link to both my website, and the 7 Loaves site. Telling your readers about the contest. Feel free to use any of the images in the post if you’d like. Send a trackback here- or leave a comment with your post URL. Posting will get you 10 entries.
• Digg it: If you have a digg account, you can ‘digg’ this contest if you like it, and get 2 entries for Digging. Digg it here!
• Forums: If your a member of a forum you can post about the contest at the forum- without spamming! Be sure there is not already a post about the contest. If there is already a post about it at the forum, you can reply to the post to keep it bumped up 1 time, for one entry. You get 2 entries for being the first poster on the forum. Just email me @ evelester@gmail.com with the thread address.
• Stumble It: If you use StumbleUpon you can stumble it then thumbs up. Just email me your stumble upon profile page so I can verify. You get 1 entry for stumbling the post, (thumbs up if you like it, or thumbs down if you don’t.)

There you have it. Super easy huh? Let me know if you have any questions! And Good luck to everyone!