At our October meeting we had representatives from 10,000 villages and Minka Peru give a lovely talk about fair trade and alpaca fleece.

Founded in 1979, MINKA is a project of a non-profit organization: CEPIA. CEPIA’s principal task was to offer training to the artisans located in the rural zones of Peru. The project, MINKA, had been envisioned as an organization that would export their products, to do activities of Quality Control and Research & Development for new products.

As a reward for their work, MINKA, in 1991, was the first organization-producer invited to be part of the IFAT (International Fair Trade Association, www.ifat.org), an international organization which regulates Fair Trade all around the world. The members of IFAT, such as Ten Thousand Villages are well known.

Renato talking about Alpaca and why we should encourage the natural colors of the animals, not the dyed colors.

Alpaca teddy bears. They're sooooo soft and have their own clothes!

Barbara modeling one of the Alpaca shawls.

A little toy Alpaca.

Some of the items available at 10,000 Villages on Lakeshore.

The lovely, glowing Jennifer modeling one of the sari-silk hats.

Pictures of the nativity scene that Norma bought at 10,000 Villages.