Ten Thousand Villages of Austin’s Blog

Rain and Mud, two words that best describe the first 5 days of our Villages adventure at the 36th Annual Kerrville Folk Festival. These two words resulted in two nights of cancelled craft sales, low attendance during the entire weekend and lots of fun with mud -both on foot and on wheels!

Unfortunately, sales were not as good as expected because of the impact of “Texas Deluge 2007”, but our beautiful booth stayed dry. Most of the Kerrvers that braved the rain to shop with us were excited to see that Ten Thousand Villages had become a part of the Festival. The other shoppers were glad to find out about our mission and look forward to visiting us in Austin and Houston.

We are happy to be a part of this Texas tradition rain or shine. The Kerrville staff and volunteers have been nothing but the most supportive team of any event we’ve attended.

With the second weekend of the festival on the horizon, we have high hopes for beautiful weather, beautiful people and beautiful sales!

For now, I’ll put my raincoat “on call”.

Austin celebrated Earth Day yesterday at downtown’s Republic Park.

Ten Thousand Villages was a sponsor and had a booth with a generous selection of our recycled products–the recycled paper hot mat from the Philippines and galimoto wire bicycle from Kenya were popular items.

Above: Kitty at the Good Common Sense booth with Chris Searles, a coordinator of the Sustainable Shopper’s Ball, browsing rugs made from recycled soda bottles.

Thank you to the American Friends Service Committee of Austin for coordinating such a successful Fair Trade Craft Sale and Education Forum. Ten Thousand Villages was glad to be a part of it for the second year in a row and look forward to the fourth annual event next year.

This sale is about much more than purchasing quality products. It is about:

• Supporting women’s cooperatives that serve as a living alternative to dominant forms of production and distribution that exploit rather than support the creators of the goods we purchase.
• Influencing consumer’s purchasing habits which will favor small producers instead ofadding to corporate profits.
• Shortening the gap between producer and consumer.

Vendors at the sale included:

Colores del Pueblo

Dignity & Justice Maquiladora

Hebron Embroidery Project

Hilo de la Justicia

Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund

Ten Thousand Villages

Weavers of Hope

Jolom Mayaetik