Mennonite Weekly Review

HESSTON, Kan. — Students can make the world a better place by purchasing gifts and coffee that are fairly traded.

Doug Dirks, Ten Thousand Villages public relations director, speaks to Hesston College students in David LeVan’s Exploring Business class. — Photo by Larry Bartel/Hesston College

They can expand work opportunities for people around the world by pursuing careers in fair trade.

This was the message that Doug Dirks of Akron, Pa., public relations director for Ten Thousand Villages, conveyed in presentations at a Hesston College chapel service and meetings with business and anthropology students Nov. 22-24.

Dirks, a native of Abbotsford, B.C., has traveled to 36 countries to meet with artisans and business leaders participating in the Ten Thousand Villages Fair Trade network. Along the way, he has learned their stories and cultural and business practices, which often have universal applications.

Dirks illustrated how the goals that result from implementing Fair Trade practices are being achieved by telling the artisans’ stories and showing photos of Fair Trade workers in Bangla­desh, Egypt, Peru, India, Laos, Tanzania and Kenya.

Edna Ruth Byler, a native of Hesston and alumna of Hesston Academy, led the Fair Trade movement that has become Ten Thousand Villages. In 1946 Byler saw the need for poor women in Puerto Rico to earn income so their daughters could go to school. She purchased their needlework and marketed it to friends in her home community in Pennsylvania. Later she traveled across the United States, telling the stories of the artisans whose needlework she sold out of the trunk of her car.

Her efforts provided the impetus for what is now one of the largest Fair Trade organizations in North America.

If Mennonites had saints, Byler would be one of them, said Dwight Roth, social science department chair.

Roth knew Byler when he was growing up in Pennsylvania. His visit to the Mennonite Central Committee and Ten Thousand Villages headquarters this summer prompted him to find a way to honor Byler’s memory and bring the story of Fair Trade to Hesston College during its centennial year celebration.

Jim and Belle Boyts, also Hess­ton alumni and current residents, provided much of the funding for Dirks’ presentations.