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.

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Roots Batik Workshop - Gambia, West Africa - Meet the Fair Trade Artists

Kabir DuBois has a vision for Gambia. He's a hard worker, always considering every angle and treating his employees well, even during times of the year when the market is bare and it's hard to feed your family.

Introduced in 2007 to our company, Kabir's wax batik art is not only being introduced to North American consumers, the artisans at Roots Batik Workshop are earning as much as 300% above the country's minimum wage. Earning this "living wage" is giving the artists more time with their families and about every other weekend off. Kabir likes to spend this time he's always hoped for to go fishing - his favorite catch is red snapper, an extreme delicacy in Gambia that he says he could sell for a lot of money, but he brings home to his family instead.

These men are preserving cultural scenes and this art form and bringing postitive as well as mysterious aspects of Gambian and African life to the rest of the world. A Better Footprint is proud to bring affordable African art into a spectrum of homes where an awareness about African life and current issues will hopefully stem from these pieces.

Support Roots Batik Workshop and the effort to pay these artists farily as well as spread African art and awareness by buying their works of art in our fair trade store.