If the previous two years are any indication, the upcoming Fair Trade Fair at the Harvard Unitarian Church will be colorful, have an abundance of handmade goods—from jewelry to fabrics to coffee—and have a positive impact on lives far away. As in the past, each item for sale is also likely to have a story behind it.
“I dream of providing a better life for my daughter. I want her to be a professional,” Diega Churunel Quisquina, a 32-year-old single mother near Solola, Guatemala, said for a Mayan Hands newsletter.
Quisquina supports her family with the purses and jewelry she makes and sells, primarily through Mayan Hands, an organization that partners with weavers in the highlands of Guatemala to help them out of poverty and toward self-sufficiency.
Mayan Hands is one of nine vendor organizations brought together for the Nov. 18 event at the Fellowship Building on Elm Street. All of the vendors commit to following the core principles of fair trade, a strategy to promote sustainable development and alleviate poverty. Members of the Fair Trade Federation are expected to place the interests of producers and their communities at the forefront of their enterprise. They agree to work with transparency and accountability, pay promptly and fairly, and develop producers’ independence.
They also agree to respect cultural identities, protect the rights of children, and promote safe and healthy work environments.
For thousands of years, Mayan women have woven intricate textiles for their families and trade using back strap looms. They are renowned for their skills and complex patterns, some of which may take and hour to weave an inch. With nearly a million weavers in Guatemala and not enough outlets for their products, many of the cash-strapped women live in poverty. Mayan Hands’ mission is to help the weavers earn a modest and regular income with which they can feed their families better, send their children to school, and gain control over their lives.
Representatives of other organizations with similar goals will bring goods from other parts of South America, the Middle East, Africa, India, and Asia to the fair.
Folk Art Mavens will offer a wide variety of handcrafted items from Palestinians camps in Lebanon. Haiti Projects will sell embroidered linens and women’s nightwear created by its Sewing Cooperative Program in rural Haiti. Jewelry made from recycled fabric and paper by women in Uganda will come through Project Have Hope. Alpaca Artwear will sell alpaca accessories from Andean women.
Other vendors include the Sharing Foundation with items from the Girls Sewing School in Cambodia; Global Goods Partners, selling jewelry and personal items from many countries; Earthfrendz, with paper jewelry from India; and CREA House, selling Central American goods. All of the goods are directly connected to the individuals who made them and to their communities.
The Fair Trade Fair, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church’s Woman’s Alliance and its Social Action Committee, grew out of a Sunday morning talk.
“A teacher spoke about her work with a woman’s college in Ethiopia and solicited books for the college’s sparse library,” Janice Goodell, one of the fair’s organizers, told the Press. “She also sold jewelry made by mothers who supported their daughters’ education from the jewelry.”
Another church member, weaver Dorothy Solbrig, learned about the Mayan Hands program at a weaving conference. She successfully sold some of the Guatemalan products to the church community to raise funds for the charitable organization. Solbrig and Goodell’s experiences sparked the idea to bring a fair trade sale to the town.
The fair can also be inspirational. Last year, middle schoolers who were helping at the fair learned about the Sharing Foundation’s programs in Cambodia. By selling baked goods and used books at a winter yard sale, the students raised $600, enough to send two Cambodian teenagers to high school.
The Fair Trade Fair will be held Sunday, Nov. 18, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Harvard Unitarian Universalist Church Fellowship Hall on Elm Street.
