We are excited to present a limited edition collection in support of Mountain2Mountain, a non profit organization working to provide education and opportunity for women and girls in war-torn Afghanistan. The collection’s release coincides with the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day on March 8, and its pieces feature poetry about resilience, courage and strength to inspire women and girls to be agents of change within their communities and cultures. This small collection is available exclusively on our website and in our San Francisco store, and 50% of the proceeds go to M2M. M2M was started in 2006 and seeks to promote “sustainable progress on human rights, gender equity and the economic vitality of communities on the fringe.” Its founder, Shannon Galpin, is a single mother from Breckenridge, Colorado, who in 2009 became the first woman to mountain bike across the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan. Her ground-breaking trek highlighted how a foreign woman could do something for Afghan women that they could not yet do for themselves to draw attention to the gender inequality they suffer. During her journey she wore under her headscarf a pair of Jeanine Payer earrings bearing the Emily Dickinson quote, “I dwell in Possibility,” and on her finger a ring with the inscription, “The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide,” by Longfellow. These pieces were gifts from her family, and Shannon wears them as talismans on all her trips to Afghanistan. Read more> We at Jeanine Payer, a company that is owned and mostly run by women, are honored and happy to be in a position to help such an important cause. We all feel inspired by Shannon and her work and privileged to work with Mountain2Mountain in supporting women’s education and opportunity. See the collection> Pieces will available through March 1, 2012.