Our amazing handcrafts and gourmet organic treats make great gifts. You'll get information along with each purchase about Fair Trade and how you're contributing to the effort to Leave Better Footprints.

A Better Footprint is a non-profit organization with the mission of restoring dignity
to the world's poor through education about Fair Trade and engaging in sales of fairly traded goods.
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Artesanas Campesinas - Mexico - Meet the Fair Trade Artisans

Artesanas Campesinas is a new project wherein jewelry and other crafts are purchased directly from Fair Trade artisans in Mexico, without exploitative middle men typical in the import/export industries. Specifically, the jewelry-making villages of Tecalpulco and Taxco El Viejo house the artisans who benefit from A Better Footprint's jewelry purchases.

The idea of an artisan-direct marketing system is part of a continuing long-term effort to re-establish a successful artisan economics in the Taxco area cottage industry. Local handcraft and .925 silver jewelry production has, over the past fifteen years, been increasingly blasted by the effects of globalization. Much of the vibrant artisanal silver industry has been swamped with low-cost oriental products. Tens of thousands of crafts people from these Mexican villages previously have been forced to migrate to the US, seeking to work, often illegally, as laborers.

Now, the women who have remained in small villages have created an original marketing system which revolutionizes the process by which handcrafts in the third world are brought to the market and distributed to the public. They call it the Artisan Owned Directed Distribution Model (AODDM).

The women who craft, by hand, this mosaic jewelry for you are proud to revitalize their traditional art and offer quality, handmade artifacts for customers who shop the Fair Trade stores who directly buy from them, ensuring a brighter future for their families. Using locally sourced silver, alpaca, pewter, glass, shells, and gemstones, each piece is an exclusive gem of hope and beauty for the recipient to exhibit proudly.

Support these artisans by buying their products in our fair trade store.