Ten Thousand Villages sells third world hopes
Jes Hearn
Issue date: 11/9/04 Section: News
Brock will be promoting awareness of international issues and free trade in hosting the annual Ten Thousand Villages sale, taking place in the Sean O'Sullivan Gallery during the week of Nov. 8-12.
The sale is sponsored by Brock and WUSC (World University Service of Canada), and will be run mostly by volunteers within the university as well as volunteers from the Niagara-on-the-Lake store.
Ten Thousand Villages is a completely non-profit organization that sells crafts made by disadvantaged artisans in developing countries from around the world. The organization sells hand-made crafts and products from 30 underdeveloped countries to consumers in support of free trade. The organization works directly with people who are unemployed or severely underemployed, single mothers, disabled, or widowed and have never sold or marketed their crafts before.
The artisans are encouraged to make whatever they can with the materials that they have and Ten Thousand Villages pays them a wage up front to help feed, clothe and pay for housing, and cuts out the middle man of conventional trading. The artisans are paid immediately so they don't have to rely on begging, or over-charging banks and money launderers. The products are made in small group settings or homes where there is usually no education system, and where artisans can make crafts while managing household and farming chores.
Carol Durksen, the Assistant Manager of the Niagara-on-the-Lake location, said that it is also important for the organization to also teach the artisans how to make a living.
"We teach them marketable skills that they can use to earn wages in order to care for their families and bring them out of poverty," Durksen said. "The organization is about teaching how to earn a living with dignity. Some of the villages we work with have never had an education system, and one village in Cameroon ... was able to pay for a teacher with their earnings from their crafts, and they now have a school for the children."
The sale is sponsored by Brock and WUSC (World University Service of Canada), and will be run mostly by volunteers within the university as well as volunteers from the Niagara-on-the-Lake store.
Ten Thousand Villages is a completely non-profit organization that sells crafts made by disadvantaged artisans in developing countries from around the world. The organization sells hand-made crafts and products from 30 underdeveloped countries to consumers in support of free trade. The organization works directly with people who are unemployed or severely underemployed, single mothers, disabled, or widowed and have never sold or marketed their crafts before.
The artisans are encouraged to make whatever they can with the materials that they have and Ten Thousand Villages pays them a wage up front to help feed, clothe and pay for housing, and cuts out the middle man of conventional trading. The artisans are paid immediately so they don't have to rely on begging, or over-charging banks and money launderers. The products are made in small group settings or homes where there is usually no education system, and where artisans can make crafts while managing household and farming chores.
Carol Durksen, the Assistant Manager of the Niagara-on-the-Lake location, said that it is also important for the organization to also teach the artisans how to make a living.
"We teach them marketable skills that they can use to earn wages in order to care for their families and bring them out of poverty," Durksen said. "The organization is about teaching how to earn a living with dignity. Some of the villages we work with have never had an education system, and one village in Cameroon ... was able to pay for a teacher with their earnings from their crafts, and they now have a school for the children."
