AKAMBA
Akamba Handicraft Industry Cooperative Society, Ltd., was started in 1963 by 100 carving craftsmen. Since that time, the organization has grown to include nearly 3,000 wood and stone carvers. The organization sells 40 percent of its handicrafts locally, exporting the rest to Europe, South Africa and North America. Akamba leaders are currently working with Kenya Gatsby Trust in collaboration with United Nations’ Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to certify wood used in carving. Akamba is establishing a nursery of fast growing neem wood trees to provide renewable resources of wood for the carvers.

BLUE HILL BY HAND - USA Fair Trade
Blue Hill incorporates qualities of light and form to elicit wonder in nature, and delight in discovering something new. Working with people in their community, they make their designs by hand, one-at-a-time. A portion of every sale goes towards non-profit groups working to further the human spirit.

CIAP
CIAP, Interegional Centre of Peruvian Artisans, is a organization of Peruvian Artisans dedicated to production and export of handicrafts made by their members. CIAP support to craftspeople developing several activities like training, technical aid and helping to improve the structure of their groups and living quality.

COMPARTE
Santiago, Chile
Comparte, a nonprofit trading organization, was organized by the Social Union of Christian Businessmen (USEC) to provide social assistance to disadvantaged craftspeople. Based in Santiago, Chile’s capital city, Comparte markets products for a variety of artisan groups located in Chile. In addition to conducting regional workshops, Comparte provides training, organizational assistance and marketing and design services to these groups. Comparte also features their crafts in markets and commercial craft stores in the region.

MAI VIETNAMESE HANDICRAFTS
Mai Handicrafts is a program for street children in Ho Chi Minh City. Started by a small group of social workers, Mai Handicrafts originally worked with poor and neglected children who could not go to school due to lack of legal papers and inability to pay tuition. Mai Handicrafts gave them work and encouraged them to attend informal classes. Now that all children are admitted to formal school for free, Mai Handicrafts provides work to their mothers and older sisters to improve family income and well-being. During recent years Mai Handicrafts has established itself as the primary marketing agent for these neglected families and women. In a developing context, it also practices a model of social development in which social service cannot be separated from economic self-reliance.

WILD BOAR CREEK
Wild Boar Creek is a Fair Trade importer whose product lines include silk textiles, silk and reed bags, pouches and cases, reed floormats, picnic/beach mats and placemats. All of their products are handwoven/handmade by subsistence farmers, landmine victims, widowed mothers and women heads-of-household, victims of domestic violence, and other economically or otherwise disadvantaged Cambodians. At present, they work with 12 villages. They are deeply committed to helping these talented but poverty-stricken people improve their standard of living.

GANESH HIMAL TRADING
The Association for Craft Producers is one of the success stories in development aid, growing from a meager beginning in 1984 to an organization which now supports over 1000 disadvantaged women. The project was originally funded by a grant from World Neighbors, and aims to employ women who come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds. The program enhances the dignity of women by helping them develop a skill from which they can earn a living. Their ultimate goal is to improve the status of women inNepal. The women producers at Dhukuti receive a fair wage and have access to low cost health care, funds for female child education, peer counseling services and an on-site shop where they can purchase dry goods at below market prices. Dhukuti also provides welfare and retirement funds, a bonus program, informal education on health care and nutrition and a cafeteria which serves a healthy daily meal. In 2000 they were able to incrase their benefits package to include a Medical and Household allowance. They are presently working on a way to provide more financial loans to groups of women producers to set up their own facilities so that even more woman can gain employment. By 2000 ACP was able to work with low income artisans from 17 districts throughout Nepal. They have had a steady growth in sales which has allowed them to increase the wage of producers by 15%.

UPAVIM
UPAVIM (Unidas Para Vivir Mejor or United for a Better Life) was organized by a group of women in the poverty stricken barrio of La Esperanza on the border of Guatemala City. They produce crafts to provide income for themselves and to provide crucial support to various community projects they have started. These projects include a medical and dental clinic, growth monitoring program, medical laboratory, breast feeding program, childrens scholarship and tutoring program, day care center and Montessori school.

YWCA – Bangladesh
The Young Women’s Christian Association, or YWCA, responded to the devastation of Bangladesh’s 1971 struggle for independence by providing assistance to widowed and homeless women in Dhaka. In addition to providing training for young women of all faiths, the YWCA has a craft program. Women are taught to sew and earn living expenses from their work. The YWCA Centre has strong connections to the Catholic Church in Bangladesh.

SHIPIBO & YINE TEXTILES – PERU
In the Peruvian Amazon, along the Ucayali River, live the indigenous Shipibo and Yine (pronounced yee naa with long e and long a) people. They dwell in small villages (between 100 and 1,000 individuals) located north and south of the city Pucallpa. They are determinedly independent and until recently have subsisted on slash-and-burn agriculture, hunting, and fishing. Even today, with increased contact from Western and Mestizo populations, they maintain a strong tribal identity and retain many of their ancient traditions and beliefs.

The Shipibo and Yine are the only two of twelve indigenous groups in Eastern Peru that still practice the traditional craft of painting on fabric with vegetable dyes. Their art-form is well known for its distinctive use of broad and thin angular geometric designs. For the Shipibo, these designs describe the lives of their families and communities in the forest. For the Yine, these designs describe the animal life of the jungle that surrounds them.

GOSPEL HOUSE HANDICRAFTS - Sri Lanka
Gospel House Handicrafts was started in 1976 by John Karunaratne, a Christian, who wanted to provide vocational training for boys from the poor areas in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. In the beginning, John trained the boys to make wooden toys, using two home-made lathes he set up in his own home. As the workforce grew and orders increased, a larger facility was needed and funding was secured to buy land and build a workshop in Madampe, 40 miles outside of Colombo. With the help of TEARCRAFT, a British ATO, the workshop now employs 30 woodworkers- 12 skilled, 10 semi-skilled, and 8 trainees.

TROPICAL SALVAGE –
Tropical Salvage pursues different wood-salvage strategies in order to create alternative wood products. The furniture is built from entombed and demolition wood. The entombed wood is mined in areas where volcanic eruptions occurred, burying large tracts of tropical forest. The entombed wood is unusually stable, very big wood (4.5 feet in diameter is fairly common) and the minerals and soil have created rich colors. The demolition wood is salvaged from scrap lumber from demolition sites in Southeast Asia. Then, employing local artisans, old wood is used to make furniture.

ENTERPRISING KITCHEN
The Enterprising Kitchen, a social enterprise, enables women to maximize their individual potential. They operate a light manufacturing company which produces specialty soap products and enables women from across Chicago to participate in an intensive, but individually oriented workforce development program which includes: paid employment, work and life skills training and a variety of other support services. While many participants in our program have challenging personal histories, often including substance abuse and homelessness, they are highly motivated and committed to building independent and sustainable livelihoods.

Each week, the women are employed twenty-five hours per week in all aspects of the soap making business from customer service, sales, inventory management, soap processing from raw materials to filling orders and shipping finished goods. The revenues generated through product sales help sustain their workforce development program and enable participants to benefit from a wide range of onsite resources and activities.

MANOS AMIGOS – Lima, Peru
Manos Amigos (hands joined in Friendship) works with artisans scattered throughout Peru who would otherwise be unemployed. A portion of their profitss supports school children in the "young towns" or squatter communities surrounding Lima, Peru

ALLPA
Named for a Quechua Indian word that means "earth", Allpa began active work as an alternative trading organization in 1985. Its marketing assistance reaches approximately 2,000 families from 100 artisan groups and family workshops in different parts of Peru. In addition to marketing assistance, Allpa provides technical help, product development advice, skills training, tools and appropriate equipment to artisans. Artisans can access short-term and mid-term loans to improve infrastructure and their workshops. Allpa works with families located in Cusco, Ayacucho, Chulucanas, Cajamarca and Huancavelica as well as Shipibo people living in the Amazon rain forest area of Pucalepa. For most of these people, craft production is their only source of income.

NOAHS ARK - INDIA
Noahs Ark was established to provide better living conditions for artisians living in extremely poor areas of India. Fair wages, along with life insurance, medical care, and educational facilities for the children of the area, are just a part of the support Noahs Ark offers to these artisans in India.

ANDES GIFTS - BOLIVIA
We believe that being a responsible overseas manufacturer means respecting the rights of your employees and making sure that they are given a fair price for their labor. There is absolutely no child labor used to produce our products. Andesgifts clothing is not made in sweatshops. All of our clothing is made by skilled artisans with whom we maintain in close contact. They have years of experience and are experts in the art of weaving warm and beautiful alpaca clothing. They take pride in their work and seem to genuinely enjoy what they do for a living. They have clean, safe, and spacious working conditions while earning far above the national average in wages.

Bolivia is a country whose economy has been greatly influenced and damaged by the drug trade. Over 80% of the worlds cocoa leaves were produced there just 5 years ago. The production of alpaca products brings much needed jobs, money, and stability into a country trying to revitalize itself from an unstable drug influenced economy of years past. Recent legislation, such as the andean free trade agreement, encourages importation of Bolivian products, including textiles and clothing, into the USA by easing tariffs and through other measures in the hope that they will soon replace coca leaves as the major Bolivian export.