Of course I prefer to travel to South America to pick out the things I sell myself, to talk to the women and their family, to enjoy the warmth of their company and the beautiful surroundings, but unfortunately this is not always possible 😉
  • Large fairtrade organisations
    We buy some products in this webshop with large fairtrade organisations. These organisations sell handmade fairtrade products from all over the World. The organisation and accountancy is transparent and open to clients and suppliers.
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    • Smaller fairtrade organisations
      These organisations sell fairtrade handmade products made in a certain country or support one or more projects in the World.

      • Pierre in France sells handmade fairtrade products made in Bolivia.
      • Shelley in de US used to volunteer in a village in Oaxaca, Mexico. She put the local weavers to work and sells their beautiful handwoven bags.

     

    • Smaller local projects organised by locals or foreigners who live in the local communities
      • Laurel Eastman runs a kite school in Cabarete, Dominican Republic. She supplies a local Haitian community with old discarded kites, where they turn them into bags which are sold in the kite school. With the profits, the community built a school. (www.kiters4communities.org)
      • Ana from Bolivia works with a group of women who sew bags from recycled plastic.
      • Carina from Cusco, Peru, leads a workshop where local women knit and crochet gloves and scarves of alpaca wool.

     

    • Individuals, mostly expats or who have a local partner, supporting a community in their home country by selling local handmade products and complying with fairtrade rules
      • Phil from Australia sells handmade alpaca scarves, beanies and gloves from Peru.
      • Shirley from Ecuador lives in Madrid. She supports a community in Ecuador where women make alpaca scarves and blankets and another community where colourful baskets are woven.
      • Claudia from Uruguay works with wool from her grandparents’ farm and together with a couple of women she spins, dyes, weaves and knits scarves and ponchos.

     

    • Organisations with Belgian roots
      • Puriy (www.suyanaperu.be) supports poor women in Villa el Salvador, Lima, Peru. They teach the women to work leather and make cute baby shoes and other things in leather.
      • Buy a Smile (www.buy-a-smile.be) is a Flemish organisation that supports fairtrade projects around the world, ao Dia in Ayacucho where young teenage mothers learn to knit and can earn an income with their knitwork.

     

    • Other organisations that have our sympathy and support
      • Bombyx (www.bombyx.be) works in Ayacucho, Peru, where women knit sweaters for Belgian designers
      • In the Mariposa Foundation in Cabarete, Dominican Republic, girls not only receive an education but are thaught to become self sufficient and to believe in themselves –they learn to swim, to be a life guard, to kite and windsurf, which makes them stonger and enable them to escape from the spiral of poverty. (www.mariposadrfoundation.org)