“Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” - Unknown
We’ve all heard the saying, and we’re familiar with the idea: If someone is taught skills and equipped properly, they can be empowered for a lifetime. In 2005 when Annie Dieselberg founded NightLight Design as a Thai for-profit business, it was to teach marketable job skills and employ women seeking an alternative to the sex industry in Bangkok, Thailand.
Over the past 18 years, NightLight Design and the non-profit ministry NightLight Foundation have worked together through a hybrid model to provide dignifying employment, transformative job training, restorative services, and gospel-focused ministry to women working in the red-light areas in Bangkok. Since 2005, we’ve employed and trained over 250 women.
The Opportunity
At any given time, NightLight employs between 20 and 30 women through NightLight Design (now rebranded as NightLight Collection) and NightLight Foundation. Some of these women are employed by the business, while others are employed through NightLight Foundation's job training program, supported by donations. Products are purchased by NightLight International, NightLight's US-based non-profit organization, and sold within the North American market out of our Missouri office.
More women are employed under the non-profit simply because the business is not big enough to sustain all of them. But we have a vision to change that. Since 2020, the business has been profitable–and now is the time to grow! In fact, we want to double the number of women employed by the business, while also creating future job opportunities in Missouri.
Growth is going to require a few key investments in NightLight Collection:
1. Business Director – Given the progress made within NightLight Collection over the past 3 years, the need has developed for a US-based Business Director to manage the growing business’s day-to-day operations and direct the strategy for further growth. It’s time to invest in someone who will be focused on growing the business full-time, intentionally and strategically.
2. Retail Marketing – NightLight Collection’s online retail website is currently under-utilized. We have a plan for expanding our existing website sales through targeted marketing efforts. Direct-to-consumer sales have higher margins than our wholesale business. Expanding online sales will boost profitability, enable us to employ more women, and affirm the dignity of our talented artisans in a way that is unique to retail sales of our own branded products.
3. Sales Expansion - We need to better understand our current customers and ways to expand our customer base, including which new markets are worth exploring and what new sales channels need experimentation. We have a strategic plan for experimenting intelligently to learn what will help us grow. With the right person in place to manage it all, we expect to see rapid expansion in our sales.
Our Goals
As we enter this season of faith-filled and strategic growth for NightLight Collection, our goals are simple:
1. Double the Women Employed by NLC – Our current projections tell us we should be able to employ another 10 women under the business within the next 3 years.
2. Explore Future Opportunities in Missouri – We want to see NightLight’s vision for sustainable employment expand to Missouri and create jobs for women leaving the sex industry there, too. How beautiful would it be for women who share similar stories in the USA to market, distribute, and sell the beautiful products produced by women in Thailand who have left trafficking and exploitation?
3. Long-Term Sustainability – This 3-year investment will empower continued strategic business and ministry growth beyond the 3-year mark, enabling NightLight Collection to be part of the restoration journey of many more women we haven’t even met yet.
Double Your Gift
We need to invest in the areas above to see the growth that will enable employment of more women. Recently, a generous business-minded donor has offered NightLight a $21,500 matching gift opportunity to launch us toward this growth.
This amount is half of what we need for Year 1 of this growth initiative, so we’re already stepping out in faith and executing our growth plans for NightLight Collection. We’re asking you to help match this gift to carry us through this first critical project phase.
“The women we employ are worthy of more than perpetual charity. They are worthy of contributing in meaningful ways to a meaningful business that creates meaningful products valued for more than the story behind them,” says Annie Dieselberg, NightLight’s founder and CEO.
NightLight’s heart is to reach more women with this opportunity—not only the opportunity for dignified employment, but the opportunity to encounter the Living God who saves, heals, and transforms in the course of that employment. Would you consider investing in this powerful opportunity to “teach them to fish,” and equip women in Bangkok and Missouri for a lifetime of dignity, value, and purpose?
