Can a piece of jewelry change the world?

Jewelry to me had always been about frills. An extra layer of stuff (one that admittedly was pretty low on the must-buy list.)

But the last few weeks have made me wonder: Perhaps jewelry can mean a little bit more.

The backstory: My daughter's Girl Scout troop is earning their Jeweler badge. The girls unanimously wanted to earn it, and I admittedly had squirreled away supplies of donations of leftover items the last couple of months.

I introduced the first project, an upcycled necklace, and let them know they could make as many as they wanted, but they could only keep one. Their response: "Could we sell them for Haiti?"

Within an hour we had designed more than 100 upcycled necklaces, which were donated to church for our Hearts for Haiti ministry, a cause dear to these girls.

Some of the upcycled necklaces made by my daughter's Junior Girl Scout troop. Funds from the sale next month go to our church's Hearts for Haiti ministry.

But it didn't stop there. As we later talked about jewelry, what it symbolized and what it was made from, I shared some stories and jewelry from Uganda that I recently received from Ember Arts, a company that works with jewelry artists in Uganda to create upcycled jewelry with paper beads that are just gorgeous. As I shared the story of some of the artists - some of whom used to earn $1 per day in hard work - the girls' response was "Can we help them too?"

Maybe jewelry in itself doesn't change the world. But perhaps the stories behind them can change hearts.