WorldCrafts adds new artisan groups and products

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—WorldCrafts, the fair-trade initiative of Woman’s Missionary Union, has partnered with impoverished artisans from Myanmar to India to Guatemala to offer more than 80 new products this year.

Light of Hope Learning Center in Bangladesh helps prevent girls from low-income families from potentially being trafficked and exploited.WorldCrafts has new partnerships with seven artisan groups:

•  Anadoule in Turkey provides opportunities for impoverished women to learn skills in handmade crafts and keep the Turkish culture alive.

• Inle Clay in Myanmar enables artisans to learn the story behind the clay Nativity scenes they create while earning money for health care and other needs.

• Kenya Vision  employs Maasai women who make traditional crafts out of seed beads. The women are all in arranged marriages and married between ages 10 and 14. Each woman has three to five children. Their wages are used to pay school fees, buy food for their families and provide medial care for their children.

• Light of Hope Learning Center in Bangladesh helps prevent girls from low-income families from potentially being trafficked and exploited. The center serves as a day shelter and provides girls with education, life skills, health care and moral instruction. The young women learn they are special, created by God and have great potential for living a transformed lives.

• Tabitha Ministries in Guatemala employs eight artisans who use the money earned from products sold through WorldCrafts to purchase firewood and corn.

• Wandee in Thailand employs six women artisans who create leather wallets as they rebuild their lives after leaving the sex industry.

• White Rainbow Project shares the love of Jesus with the widows of India who are shunned, exploited and denied any sense of dignity. Earning their own money gives them freedom to choose their own destiny, many for the first time.

For more information, click here.