One Bead

“This (blazer) makes me feel good. Can I wear it for the rest of the day?” —Aiden

Happy Giving Tuesday ❤️

This year we’re fundraising for our middle schoolers 💪🏽 because

Advocating for others takes courage. When our students stand up for a cause they believe in, their confidence grows. And when their confidence grows, so does their ability to advocate for themselves.

This is especially important for the demographic that One Bead serves: students with IEPs; students who are the only English-speaker in their household; students who will be the first in their family to go to college. This population must learn how to advocate for themselves long before they pursue a degree. And yet, there are very few opportunities for kids, especially those living in low-income communities, to develop self-advocacy skills at a young age.

That’s where you come in! Donate now via our to help us provide middle schoolers across Boston with the leadership skills they need to succeed in high school and beyond❤️✨



PS. Recognize any of the middle schoolers pictured here? 😉

2014: After graduation, I moved to Boston, MA. I gave myself one year to see if I could find funding to do One Bead full-time. To make ends meet, I sold olive oil on Newbury Street, photographed a couple of weddings, and worked as a temp in the development office. Every day at 5 PM, I left my cubicle, hopped on the orange line (🚊), and headed to the Boys & Girls Club where I ran one of our first pilot programs. Nights and weekends were reserved for fundraising. It took nine months and 109 meetings before I was introduced to a woman who wrote me the check that would become my initial salary.

And that’s when things got really interesting. At this point, I was still new to Boston and didn’t have credibility in the public school system. However, someone in upstate New York got wind of what I was doing and offered to pay for a program. So, I did what any founder would do: I found a couch I could sleep on (TY ) and spent the fall of 2014 running One Bead’s first full program with 54 students at North Street Elementary.

This picture was taken at the very end of the program. I am smiling. A deceiving look considering three days prior I was standing in Amy Forbes’s office in tears. The heat wasn’t working in my apartment, which meant I was now sleeping in everything I owned plus a hat and mittens. I was exhausted.

Amy laughed and said, “SARA! This is the ramen noodle chapter of your autobiography! No one wants to read a book where everything is okay and then something good happens and then it ends.”

That advice got me through the year. And, eventually, things did get easier. But not before getting infinitely harder (it turns out my ramen noodle chapter was a long one).

🍜