The Crafts

A wide variety of pre-priced handmade items, cookbooks (new and used) and special items just for kids to purchase are available in the Sunflower Building South at the Kansas Crafts booth.

The list includes decorated clothing (vest and sweatshirts), stuffed toys, special Easter and Christmas items, baby quilts and clothing, quiet books, embroidered teatowels and pillowcases, denim blankets, rugs, a variety of pillows, baskets, wood crafts, wreaths, crocheted work, wall hangings, doll clothes and jewelry.

A special section, the Kiddie Corner, makes available items priced at $3 and under. Young purchasers may chose from playdough, wood toys, bug cages, bird houses, puzzles, hair bows and writing kits.

Each year a rug loom from the Et Cetera Shop is setup to show shoppers how rugs are woven.

Old and new cookbooks will also be available for purchase in the Cookbook Nook. If you have a cookbook to donate, please pass it on to your church contact person.

For more information call Candi Sawatzky, 620-543-6576.

In additional to local crafts, the Kansas MCC Sale brings the world to you through the efforts of:

Ten Thousand Villages

In the Eisenhower Building at the fairgrounds relief sale guests have the rare opportunity of shopping for a unique variety of hand made items from countries spanning the globe--all under one roof.

Ten Thousand Villages is part of the North American network of 95 stores. Ten Thousand Villages leads the fair trade movement with over 50 years of experience providing fair wages, working capital and market for artisans in 30 Third World countries who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed.

Ten Thousand Villages Director Paul Myers comments, "We work to ensure that individual families have access to markets for their handicrafts. Trading fairly with people in small enterprises helps them to feed, educate and care for their families."

To artisans like Samuel Macharia, sales of his products at Ten Thousand Villages make a difference. Samuel has been making wire push toys for four years. He sells his toys on the street or in the market in Nairobi. He, along with four other men, make the wire push toys that Ten Thousand Villages sells.

Macharia said, "Without Ten Thousand Villages we can't meet our basic needs. Orders help us very much, and we know every year we can depend on an order from Ten Thousand Villages."

For Macharia, fair trade makes a difference every day.

Gisele Fleurant, Director of Comite Aritsanal Haitien in Haiti, has been involved in the fair trade movement for more than 20 years. She said, "With fair trade, artisans have one way of standing for themselves on their own feet. The first thing that fair trade does for the artisans is to give him the real price of the product. The second thing is the regularity of getting orders. I cannot tell you enough how important it is for them. Every year they say, 'Have you received orders?' They know they can count on those orders to settle part of their financial struggle."

By supporting the work of Ten Thousand Villages, local customers can join international trade that benefits both artisans and shoppers. Customers find unique handicrafts from cultures around the world and artisans sell their fairly traded handicrafts to suppliers in the North American marketplace. Handicraft sales also allow diverse cultures from around the world to continue to create traditional handicrafts.

--Tiffany Wyse, Newton Ten Thousand Villages store manager