The quality of life in developing countries can keep one awake at night: Children working in sweatshops; women working 19 hours a day for 10 cents a week; little access to HIV/AIDS or malaria medication; chronic starvation and institutionalized poverty.

Such inhumane conditions do not need to stay this way though. Organizations like Seattle’s Ten Thousand Villages (www.tenthousandvillages.com) — a fair-trade retailer of artisan-crafted home décor, personal accessories and gift items —is making a difference every day.

Ten Thousand Villages has spent more than 60 years cultivating trading relationships in which artisans receive a fair price for their work and consumers have access to unique, handcrafted items. The company establishes long-term buying relationships in places where skilled artisans are under- or unemployed and in which they lack opportunities for income.

“There is fair trade and free trade,” said Tyi Esha, assistant manager at Ten Thousand Villages “Free trade has an individual making a project for you, and the process is messed up and selfish. Fair trade is giving the artisans the whole profit back — not a penny more, not a penny less. It goes back to the workers.”

“Fair trade is taking a look at working conditions and transparency in business dealings, while also thinking about maintaining cultural sensibility,” Store Manager Stacie Ford-Bonnelle said. “With fair trade, the welfare of the entire community is preserved.”

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