12/01/05: Shopping With A Conscience
Shopping With A Conscience
Fair Trade Holiday Fair Sales Aid The Impoverished
The Capital Times :: SAVVY :: 1C
Thursday, December 1, 2005
By Mary Bergin The Capital Times
The sale of a kilo of coffee or a $15 purse means a family of four in Chiapas, Mexico, will have enough rice, beans and vegetables for a week.
The sale of one weaving from Ainaro, East Timor, means one child can go to school for three months. Only 25 percent of rural students attend school.
This is how what you buy can make a difference. This year's Fair Trade Holiday Fair, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Madison Area Technical College downtown campus, will have more than two dozen vendors. Many of the items for sale were made by people in impoverished nations, and their advocates are eager to share the stories.
Example: Whenever DOERS (Doers Offering Emergency Relief Support) makes $112 in profits from the sale of Afghanistan crafts, it pays for a widow in that country to take 15 months of classes in sewing, embroidery and literacy.
"At the end, she receives a sewing machine and work table," says Phyllis Hasbrouck of DOERS. "She will have a decent way to provide for her family, instead of turning to begging or prostitution, as many of Afghanistan's 1 million widows are forced to do."
Weavings are "one of the few sources of monetary income for rural Timorese women and their families," many of whom are subsistence farmers, says Diane Farsetta, Madison-Ainaro Sister City Alliance coordinator, whose fair trade merchandise is purchased from a women's weaving cooperative.
Janet Niewold of Global Reflections will sell art from Mexico and Guatemala. She talks of the ceramic sculptor who - because of bird ornament sales - has been able to add a room to his two-room house "and now has a vent to send the smoke from the wood stove in his kitchen to the outside." He has a wife and four children, one of whom is an infant.
This is where a purchase of $700 in goods from a craftswoman could be enough to pay about one-half the cost of a two-room brick and cinderblock home. The next step would be to add running water.
"A Tibetan refugee couple imports rugs and blankets to help their family and friends who are still there," says Carol Bracewell of Community Action on Latin America, an event organizer. "They don't have a retail business, per se, they just do fairs like ours."
The other holiday fair vendors, and their products, include:
Equal Exchange, tea/coffee/cocoa/chocolate; Family Farm Defenders, Wisconsin cheese/gift boxes; Global Express, global imports; Just Coffee, locally roasted coffee; Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition, CSA shares/cookbooks; Madison Arcatao Sister City Project, Salvador crafts.
Potters for Peace, Nicaraguan pottery; SERRV International/A Greater Gift, global gifts/chocolates; UNICEF, cards/gifts; Scotch Hill Farm, goat milk soap; Hmong Pandua, locally made textiles; Terra Experience, Guatemalan textiles; Rainbow Bookstore, books; Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, T-shirts/yard signs.
Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, calendars; Infoshop/Madison Fair Trade Action Alliance, fair trade information; Madison Area Peace Coalition, fair trade information; Cloudforest Initiative, Chiapas metalwork/coffee/posters; Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Palestinian crafts; Dawa Phuntsok, Tibetan rugs/sweaters; Bali & Soul, textiles/gifts; Puente de Paz, Guatemala earrings; Prayas Inc. Foundation, gift bags/wrapping; Marketplace of India, textiles.
MATC's Global Horizons Program is a co-sponsor of the event. There also will be fair trade workshops during the day.
\ E-mail: mbergin@madison.com.