2008 Woodie Awards
Ten thousand villages
Eirinn Disbrow
Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: News
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![Christina Harkness '08 [left] and Jen Sherlock '08 [right] are part of Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations and helped to organize the Ten Thousand Villages Fair Trade Festival.](http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper300/stills/ui99de9k.jpg)
Its purpose is to promote fair trade, which will provide fair wages to third world artisans, and to offer students a great selection of jewelry, onyx candle holders, jewelry boxes, instruments, decorative items, pillows and other various products.
The fair is sponsored by the Ten Thousand Villages company, which works with over 100 artisan groups in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This company has actual satellite stores that sell many more products than will be offered at the festival.
Christina Harkness '08, has been working along with her fellow peers in the Non-Profit Organizations class, to put this fair into production. She explained that the class organized the production by splitting themselves up into four sub-committees: publicity on campus, publicity in the community, the "catch-all" group and the Garden Room dinner group.
Harkness was a part of the publicity on campus sub-committee, which means that she helped advertise and bring awareness to campus about the event and about fair trade. She worked with the campus radio and newspapers, and spread the word to campus clubs and organizations so that they would encourage their members to attend the fair.
The community sub-committee has displayed advertisements all over the Allentown area and requested an article for the fair in the Morning Call. They are also working with some businesses to see if they will be willing to hang up signs in their windows. The Garden Room dinner committee will be setting up a dinner for Mon., Nov. 26, from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. This dinner will help advertise the fair to students and will include fun decorations and sample products that will be sold at the festival.
The catch-all sub-committee has been in contact with local representatives from the local Ten Thousand Villages store and has been working with them to decide what kinds of items to sell based on what items have generally been popular in the past at the College. They have been able to analyze data and surveys of the past sales at the College which have helped them greatly to plan for this year.