Jane Register

Born and raised in Philadelphia, I’ve always had an interest in other cultures growing up as a second generation Korean American in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.  After studying Sociology and Psychology, I found myself drawn to just working with people and wanting to empower people.  This led to working with at-risk youth in outdoor recreation in Wyoming to working in administration for two charter schools in West Philadelphia to running a reforestation program in the inner-city with inner-city residents.  Then, five years ago, I had the incredible opportunity to take this desire to working with people and go on a year and a half long pilgrimage around the world.  In those travels as I worked in communities throughout the developing world, I constantly came across entrepreneurial artisans making handicrafts from villages in Swaziland to slums in India to the red-light districts of Thailand.  My friend and I began dreaming about creating a way for our new friends to market their products here in the US.  Out of that was birthed, Corridor of Hope, which we started about 4 years ago.

Since then, I have also been pursuing my interest in using business and entrepreneurship for community development in the developing world through my graduate studies at Fuller Seminary.  Through my graduate studies, I recently worked with a micro-finance organization called Prana International that works in two slum communities in Kolkata, India with female loan clients.  We worked with the women to develop a micro-credit program that would not only empower the women and give them a voice in their patriarchal communities, but also give them ways to improve and develop their communities.  Currently, I am working with an organization called Open Hand Designs that markets fair trade artisan goods.  We are working on a collaborative project with the clothing company Prana and Fair Trade USA to not only get Fair Trade certification for a group of female artisans in Swaziland that are making hats, gloves, etc. but also to create a program to develop their community.