c. 1999 Religion News Service
NEW HAVEN, Conn. _ Most business people count their profits in the dollars and cents accumulating in their bank accounts.
But not Elizabeth Rider, manager of New Haven’s Ten Thousand Villages, a growing chain of stores run by the Mennonite Church which offer crafts from artisans in more than 30 impoverished and developing countries.
Punching numbers into her hand-held calculator, Rider comes up with the number that, in her eyes, measures the success of her store, which opened last July amidst the upscale shops on Chapel Street, adjacent to the campus of Yale University.
Starting with the new store’s total sales, subtracting operating expenses and dividing the result by $1,200 _ the amount Ten Thousand Villages assumes is equivalent to an annual salary in developing nations _ Rider quickly calculates the answer:”Up until Christmastime, we had supported over 60 artisans and their families for a year.” Although half-a-century old, the Ten Thousand Villages chain has been increasing its profile and its profits in the past three years, as it has moved into large urban areas after previously concentrating only on small rural communities. In addition to the New Haven store, shops have opened in the past year in West Hartford, Conn., Pittsburgh and Denver.
There are now 67 Ten Thousand Villages stores in the United States and Canada, while more than 100 other stores carry Ten Thousand Villages products combined with other merchandise.
Last year, the chain recorded sales of $15 million _ $1.5 million more than in 1997 _ and sent $4.8 million to its artisans around the world. The remainder of the revenue went toward expenses, including at least one paid, full-time employee per store. The stores rely on volunteers for their remaining staff needs.
Merchandise is mostly found in Latin America, Africa and Asia by members of the Mennonite Central Committee, the church’s international economic development organization. Larry Guengerich, the chain’s media coordinator, said that MCC ensures the artisans are legitimate and that the money is being put to good use, checking, for instance, that no slave labor is used and that proceeds go toward feeding, clothing and educating artisans’ families.
Artisans are paid in full before their crafts are shipped to the central Ten Thousand Villages warehouse in Akron, Pa., from where all the stores are stocked. The chain bills itself as”the largest alternative trade organization in North America”and adheres to a list of principles such as,”We pay fair prices for handicrafts. We pay promptly.” The idea for Ten Thousand Villages stemmed from Edna Ruth Byler, a Mennonite who visited Puerto Rico in 1946 and found what she considered high-quality embroidery with no local market. She bought samples and sold them in the United States, before returning to Puerto Rico for more products.
Soon, her house was filled with crafts, and she turned the operation over to MCC, which sold items to individuals and church groups.
The first actual stores, then called Self Help Crafts of the World, opened in Ohio in 1972. The chain took the Ten Thousand Villages name in 1996, as it began expanding to larger cities without large Mennonite communities that would recognize and be attracted to the old name, Guengerich said.
Byler’s spirit continues to pervade the chain of stores she spawned.”At the end of the day, our barometer of success is what we are able to do for the artisans themselves, not what our earnings were,”Guengerich said.
Mennonites are a sect of Anabaptists, a radical movement of 16th-century Protestantism that is best known for its pacifist stance and its rejection of infant baptism. It also adheres to the primacy of the Bible and to strict church-state separation and most follow a simplified material lifestyle.
Julia Farrell, manager of the Baltimore store since its September 1996 opening, said that at one point she went through a period of doubting whether the store really was helping anyone. Then she, along with other Ten Thousand Villages officials, traveled to Kenya to meet with some of the artisans whose crafts they buy.”Kenya showed me we are actually making a difference,”Farrell said.”We got to talk and exchange ideas. It was just wonderful.” She said the experience of managing the store and supervising a volunteer force that ranges from 25 to 38 people has not been easy. In her moments of frustration, she said she looks at her computer keyboard, to which she has tied a beaded key chain made by Maasai tribespeople in Africa.”I might be working harder than other people, and making less money, but I am helping someone on the other side of the world,”Farrell said.
Rider, manager of the New Haven store, said that the expansion into urban markets offers Ten Thousand Villages the chance to turn its shops into microcosms of the villages from which it buys. Among her 30 volunteers are Latinos, African Americans and Asians, Buddhists, Jews and Baha’is. Half are Yale students.
The store also serves as the venue for small concerts by local musicians, and Rider offers snacks and coffee to all customers, and dog biscuits for their canine companions. She hopes also to begin presentations in local schools about the artisans and their cultures.”We are here not only to sell items,”Rider said,”but to tell the stories of peoples around the world.” (OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)
Walking through the store, Rider is eager to relate the stories behind her wares. Among the items crammed into the shop are Kenyan walking sticks, for which MCC pays a voluntary 3 percent charge for reforestation; an Indian trumpet, collapsible so it can be easily transported on elephant back, a feature of many traditional Indian crafts; a Ugandan harp made only of wood and hide; and baskets from Botswana, of which Rider said,”These are the epitome of basketry.” Also for sale: dolls made in Calcutta by a group of Muslim, Christian and Hindu women working together; Egyptian greeting cards made of papyrus instead of paper; colorful clerical stoles from Guatemala and the West Bank; a 95-pound black elephant statuette from Laos, next to which Rider has placed a bowl of peanuts and a sign reading,”Please do feed the elephant”; and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa candles, made by the chain’s only North American cooperative, a group of Durham, N.C., women working their way off welfare.
Although the stores are under the MCC umbrella, not all of the managers or volunteers are Mennonite. But Rider, who is Catholic, said her work is a direct outgrowth of her faith and its parallels with Mennonite beliefs.”Both Romans (Catholics) and Anabaptists have this theology that faith and works are intrinsic to one another,”she said.”Faith cannot exist in a vacuum. I feel really strongly about that. And, it seems, so do the Anabaptists.” DEA END KRESS
