wfn.org | UMNS# 05120-Craft sales target poverty, 'one life at a time'

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Craft sales target poverty, 'one life at a time'

Feb. 25, 2005	 News media contact:   Matt  Carlisle * (615) 742-5470*
Nashville {05120}

A UMC.org Feature
By David Frey*

Patsy Mosley takes tough, winding honeysuckle vines and the branches
from willows that grow alongside southeastern Kentucky creeks and weaves
them into beautiful baskets, just as her mother did, and her
grandmother, and women in her family going back at least four
generations.

Along with other Appalachian artisans, she sells her baskets through Red
Bird Mission, a United Methodist Church project that seeks to alleviate
poverty by connecting rural craftspeople with interested buyers and
getting them a fair price for their work. Their handicrafts sell at a
Beverly, Ky., craft shop, on the Internet and at church-sponsored craft
sales around the country, where shoppers fill church basements and lawns
to buy gifts that can make a big difference in people's lives.

"I always liked doing stuff with my hands," says Mosley, "so being able
to sell here at the craft store, it's been a help bringing in extra
money."

Red Bird Mission is one of several nonprofit organizations working with
churches to sell crafts made by people around the world for fair prices.
Those few dollars changing hands for a wooden toy or a ceramic mask can
improve the life of the craftsperson a world away.

"It is our duty to address one life at a time, not just as Christians,
but as people of faith," says June H. Kim, executive secretary for the
World Hunger Poverty Program at the United Methodist Committee on
Relief.

One life at a time, those impacts add up. By paying local craftspeople,
usually women, a fair price for the work they create, such "fair trade"
organizations aid individuals, their families and their communities.

"Those kinds of principles address the root causes of poverty," Kim
says.

One nonprofit group, Ten Thousand Villages, began using local crafts to
address global poverty in 1946, when Edna Ruth Byler, a volunteer for
the Mennonite Central Committee, started selling the embroidery work of
Puerto Rican women she taught to sew. Since then, the
Mennonite-affiliated organization has expanded from church craft sales
to add more than 100 stores across the United States and Canada.

Last year, they sold $15.2 million in crafts made by artisans from 115
craft groups in 32 countries. Shoppers pick from painted gourds from
Peru, ceramic pots from Vietnam and beaded jewelry from Kenya. The few
dollars from each item add up.

"We've heard from artisans that it's the difference between having one
meal a day to having two meals a day," says Juanita Fox, a spokeswoman
for Ten Thousand Villages.

Fair trade buyers pay what the artisans think their work is worth. In
some cases, Fox says, they actually haggle the price upward. Such groups
"offer an opportunity for artisans to continue their handicraft
traditions with dignity," she says. "When they're receiving a fair price
and there's value given to their work, it does a lot for a person's
spirit."

The benefits add up. In one case, Fox says, a Peruvian women making wool
llama toys earned enough money to leave behind her ramshackle shack in a
shantytown for a brick home and to employ others in her community. Such
stories are common, she says.

You don't have to look abroad for changed lives. At Red Bird Mission,
sales of cornshuck ornaments and handmade dulcimers give a little extra
spending money to artisans in Appalachia where jobs are few and money is
tight.

Seeing their crafts sold can affect participants in ways that other
poverty-alleviation programs don't, says Craig Dial, Red Bird Mission's
director of economic opportunity.

"I know I'm making a difference in people's lives who didn't think they
were worth much," Dial says. "We all need to feel like we're worth
something."

That means a lot, Mosley says.

"You produce a product that's quality enough that people like it and
want to buy it," she says.

Last year, Red Bird Mission bought $122,000 worth of crafts and sold
them at 31 church craft shows across the country. The sales aid artisans
from about 263 rural families.

Basket by basket, rug by rug, sales from church craft shows and fair
trade shops can play an important role in addressing poverty by linking
people who have disposable income with those often living hand to mouth.

"As a consumer in a developed country," Kim says, "we have a great
potential to impact the lives of other people. We really need to be
conscious of the products that we purchase and keep social justice in
mind."

# # #

* Frey is a free-lance writer in Carbondale, Colo.

News media contact: Matt Carlisle, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5153 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service
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