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In an e-mail, Dearnley, who heads Pura Vida Partners' work with Cost Rican children, said one of Costa Rica's most prosperous regions just four years ago is now in crisis.

"In many families the children go hungry. This area of Costa Rica (San Ramon) used to be one of the most prosperous just four years ago," Dearnley said. "It has now become one of the most impoverished as farmers struggle to feed their families." Because of the price he receives from fairly traded coffee, Efrain, a Costa Rican coffee farmer, "is now able to send his 18 year old daughter Eugenia to college," Dearnley said. "Previously he was unable to pay for her bus fare, enrollment fee, and books. Now, his daughter is able to realize her dream of studying coffee farm administration and export. She is taking classes that are giving her skills that are very helpful to other farmers."

Bright Hope International, an evangelical humanitarian organization, similarly combines fair trade with relief and missions projects. A group of Indonesian men, one of 80 indigenous project partners Bright Hope works with, couldn't afford to attend Bible college and still provide for their families.

"The missionaries there came up with a way that their families could live by making beaded bells," said Sue Elworth, economic development director. Bright Hope then became the distributor. "If a woman could sell 20 beaded bells, which each take about a day and a half to make, she can feed her family for a month. While they're doing that, their husbands can be in school." The project was so successful that the mission group started a similar program with an eye toward evangelizing non-Christians workers.

Stravers has a similar project with an evangelistic bent. The former missionary volunteers with the Bible League to bring Bibles to a group of women in a closed Asian country. She then takes home quilts and magnets to sell in her fair-trade store. About half of the women who make the quilts are Christians, and they are able to share the gospel with their coworkers.

"I think it's a really powerful witness that we're all a family and that we care about them," Stravers said. "Hopefully they receive the message that this is done in love and in Christ's name."

Elworth got involved with Bright Hope after working as a buyer for the Montgomery Ward department store. Following the birth of her son, she helped to start a transitional housing program for single mothers, but Elworth wanted to get back into retail. She was struck by the degree to which a fair wage can change a person's life.

"We have some projects in India where the kids were sleeping in the street naked. And the people we're working with are teaching the teenagers skills, so they can go back out there and earn a living." Elworth said, "We can make a big difference. We feel like we touch over a quarter of a million people in a significant way. They're eating because of the work we do." Elworth is developing Bright Hope's wholesale division in order to make steady purchases and thus prevent "feast and famine" cycles in the areas where they work.

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November (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47