Global Village offers fair trade at a fair price
There are not many places in Logan that sell Tibetan prayer flags and handmade jewelry from countries across the globe, but Global Village, located on 146 N. 100 East, seems to have them all with a fair trade certification attached.
Pam Riley, retired USU professor and Global Village volunteer said Global Village is a nonprofit, volunteer-based organization, has been helping women across the globe survive and better the lives of their children by selling their artisan crafts at the store.
Selling things that are only fair trade ensures that the people who make these crafts get a fair price for the crafts that they made, allowing them to make more money and better their lives because of it.
Riley said the fair trade is the biggest draw to the store for him.
“I like the idea that we are helping people feed their families in these countries,” he said. “People get screwed so bad outside of the fair trade realm.”
Buying most of their inventory from fair trade organizations such as Ten Thousand Villages – the largest fair trade vendor in the U.S. – A Brighter Hope and A Greater Gift, Global Village is able to help people in more than 40 countries by selling their crafts by contracting with people in remote villages. A series of items sold at Global Village that are made out of recycled tea bags helps support 60 people in Africa, Riley said.
According to information provided by A Greater Gift and Ten Thousand Villages, buying fair trade means that these organizations are able to ensure that the people who are making the shop’s merchandise are not working in sweat shops and can set the prices for all of their products, built on their traditional skills. It also allows them to market their handicrafts in a just manner and educate consumers in the United States about economic justice and other cultures.
With the most popular items at the shop being jewelry and purses, Global Village carries a variety of handmade pieces from around the world, some made out of recycled materials such as bracelets made from the coloring on electrical wiring, others made out of glass beads from India and purses that are hand sewn out of vibrant batik fabrics.
Sally Keller, who manages Global Village, looks at Global Village beyond the cultural experience it provides people in the United States to what it provides for the artisans monetarily.
“We look at these items and they are nice but beyond that we look at the Artists, 70 percent of them women who are the the sole providers for their children,” Keller said. “There are many social issues that are affected by them selling their crafts.”
Global Village is able to help send children to school, better the kind of foods they eat and empower these women by selling their crafts, Keller said.
Men and women alike benefit from the items sold at Global Village, including Divine Chocolate, a fair trade chocolate company that comes from Ghana.
Divine Chocolate is the only cocoa co-op where the growers own a portion of the company, allowing them to see over the price of the cocoa and the operations of the company.
With no paid employees, it allows all the funds made to go directly back to those who are in need of them. Keller said she puts in as much time one would put into a full-time job, scheduling 12 volunteers a week to run the store, managing the daily activities and ordering for the store.
Global Village is open Thursday – Friday Noon until 6 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
–ch.jensen@aggiemail.usu.edu