(PRESS RELEASE) On Friday and Saturday, August 9 and 10, 2024, the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL, will once again host the Chicago Responsible Jewelry Conference. The annual gathering of the international community of thinkers and doers in responsible jewelry will take place alongside the INSTORE jewelry retailer trade show, as it did in 2023.
The ongoing CRJC and INSTORE collaboration by co-locating the two shows created greater industry awareness and helped expand CRJC’s mission of creating responsible supply chains for jewelry materials and production. At the same time, it fostered greater communication and new educational and networking opportunities for people throughout the jewelry industry.
The day after the conference, Sunday, August 11, attendees will have the opportunity to meet with responsible distributors of colored gemstones and diamonds at the Responsible Gem Boutique.
CRJC began in 2016 to address the ethical and environmental damage the jewelry industry has been a party to throughout its history and to bring forth actionable plans for a more just and sustainable industry. The conference rapidly gained support from governments, NGOs, and the jewelry industry alike. Eight years later, we’ve seen consumer demand for responsible jewelry grow and an industry that has grown to meet those consumers’ needs.
The goal of the Chicago Responsible Jewelry Conference is two-fold:
- To create dialog among all participants in the supply chain, and to tell the truth, even unpleasant truths, to one another. Understanding and knowledge are the first requirements for change.
- To initiate action among jewelry stakeholders. It’s not enough to just talk about problems; the industry must act to solve them. To date, the Chicago Responsible Jewelry Conference has motivated the launch of over a dozen worldwide initiatives. By coming together to learn, we inevitably are motivated to act.
More information, including speakers, events, times, and prices will be released soon. Keep an eye on the CRJC website for more details.
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The Chicago Responsible Jewelry Conference was founded by Susan Wheeler, as part of Wheeler’s non-profit, Responsible Jewelry Transformative. The Responsible Jewelry Transformative’s mission is to engage miners, makers, professionals, educators, and students—everyone in the jewelry industry—to address all the ways that individuals and companies can be involved in the responsible jewelry movement, to provide structure and funding to meaningful initiatives that can cause change, and to make a difference by making things happen.
