Fair Trade Gifts Help Artisans And The Environment

Transcript

More and more products are being made in developing countries where workers are exploited for less than a living wage. Wouldn't it feel great to give holiday gifts made by artisans who are paid a fair wage for their work? It's not hard to do. The Allegheny Front's Tim Palucka found that out when he when out searching for fair trade organizations.

NAT SOUND: Drums and rattles playing.

PALUCKA: At the 10,000 Villages store in Pittsburgh, you can find enough drums, maracas, and rattles from Cameroon to form the percussion section of a large band. You can also find figurines carved by Palestinians, river rock paperweights from Vietnam, and paper products made from the hyacinth weed in Bangladesh. What you won't find is any product that exploits the ecology or economy of these developing countries. Pat Barbarino Perego, President of the Board of 10,000 Villages, makes sure of that.

PEREGO: Our mission is to give artisans in 30 developing countries a market outside their homeland. We fairly trade with the artisans, buying their product outright for a living wage for their economy. The mission is not only to give the artisans a livelihood, but to teach them how to be good to their environment and reuse the raw materials that they have.

PALUCKA: This lesson can be seen everywhere you look in the 10,000 Villages store. Perego points out examples as we tour the shop.

PEREGO: Here's a cool piece. Here's an ornament from Benin. So they take colored plastic bags, cut them into strips, and weave them into an ornament that looks like a lady from Africa.

PALUCKA: There are benches, tables, and CD holders all made of bamboo from Vietnam. Bamboo grows back quickly after harvesting. And then there's Perego's favorite.

PEREGO: The olive wood is a great wood because there is so much grain to it that you get to see the various colors of the grain. I like that because I know that it comes from a very old tree, and that speaks to my heart.

PALUCKA: She's also inspired by the personal stories of the people who make the products.

PEREGO: We had one artisan come to Pittsburgh a couple years ago and he was from Cameroon and he makes a ju-ju bead rattle that's really loud. And it touched me because he has 13 children and he can support these children by making this product.

PALUCKA: A few miles away in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, Amy and Michael Sobkowiak run Women of the Cloud Forest. It's a fair trade business they founded while living in Costa Rica. The Sobkowiaks had no idea they would start a business like this when they went to Central America in 2001. But they noticed a small art center for tourists that wasn't attracting much business. Instead of just walking away, they began to question themselves.

SOBKOWIAK: So we said, 'Is there a way we can help them on a larger scale, instead of maybe sending a donation down to the art center? Maybe there is something we can do for them up here.' So part of that equation is giving them economic opportunities. Fair trade is one of those economic opportunities.

PALUCKA: They eventually came up with an idea based on Michael's hobby: birdwatching.

SOBKOWIAK: It always took me a long time to get the bird book out of my backpack, and by the time I got it out, the bird was gone. So I said there has to be a better way of carrying my bird book around. So we created this bag and I said 'Ah perfect. No one else is making anything like this.'

PALUCKA: The field guide bags featured a detailed embroidery of a local bird. To broaden their market, the local women were soon making tote bags. They also started crafting earrings and bracelets from rainforest seeds.

NAT SOUND: Michael pouring seeds across the table.

SOBKOWIAK: In here, these are the guanacoste seeds. There is a group down off the mountain a little bit and they're doing a reforestation project and they collect the seeds already. Well if there's a way that we can purchase the additional seeds that they'll be collecting, now they have two things - one, they'll be reforesting and two, there will be an economic incentive for those seeds to be collected.
PALUCKA: Women of the Cloud Forest is now a company of 120 women. Amy and Michael hold classes to train them how to embroider and make jewelry.

SOBKOWIAK: Some ladies can walk away with $10 to $20 in a day's worth of jewelry making, where a typical wage down there would be $8 cleaning.

PALUCKA: The Sobkowiaks travel a lot to try to find new outlets for their products in the U.S. Right now, you can find them in 45 retail shops, as well as in gift shops at botanical gardens, zoos, and museums.

NAT SOUND: Grinding coffee beans, pounding on metal nozzle to prevent blockage.

EILEEN RIFFLE: That's all the coffee going in to be ground.

PALUCKA: In Pittsburgh's market-filled Strip District, volunteers for Building New Hope are spending their Sunday afternoon at La Prima Espresso. They're grinding coffee and filling bags with fresh roasted, fair trade coffee beans from Nicaragua.

PALUCKA: Barbara Wein and Jorge Portillo founded Building New Hope in 1992.The coffee business is just one of the many ways the group has helped Latin American communities since then. Matt Yough, who directs the volunteer effort on Sunday afternoons, explains how the coffee business started.

YOUGH: Donna Tabor, who is our contact on the ground in Nicaragua, found this farm in El Porvenir, and they couldn't sell their beans. There were 48 families on the farm, this wonderful coffee, and they couldn't find anybody to buy it. Donna said 'let me go to Pittsburgh and see what we can do.'

PALUCKA: La Prima roasted the first 2,000 pounds for free and the rest at cost. The El Porvenir farmers received more than fair trade prices for their beans; That first 30,000 pounds is now long gone down the mouths of many customers; La Prima finished processing a second batch of 35,000 pounds this past spring. The families of El Porvenir are still in business thanks to Building New Hope.

NAT SOUNDS: Scooping coffee beans and filling bags.

YOUGH: It's one of the most unique coffees I've ever tasted - it's the stuff of gods. It's shade grown, bird-friendly, so it's completely organic and completely fair trade.

PALUCKA: So when you do your holiday shopping this year, think about giving fair trade gifts. You'll be helping out artisans and farmers and the environment in developing countries while giving presents you can feel good about. For the Allegheny Front, I'm Tim Palucka.