In the summer of 2003, at the age of 20, Benita Singh spent a life-changing month in Guatemala working with women’s cooperatives that suffered from economic and political discrimination in the wake of the country’s 36-year civil war. Benita’s experience only reinforced her understanding of the harsh inequities facing a majority of Guatemalan women, four out of five of whom have less than a sixth grade education. The situation is particularly challenging for those inhabiting isolated rural areas, where the average family lives on less than U.S.$650 a year. While many of the nation’s indigenous women excel at producing superior quality handicrafts, they lack access to markets that will pay a fair wage for their goods.

Seeking to link such women to markets in the United States, Benita and a friend, Ruth DeGolia, loaded their suitcases with handicrafts – multi-colored belts, hand-woven scarves, beaded jewelry, and hand crafted ceramics. Upon returning home, the two held a series of fair trade craft sales at their Yale University campus. The $5,000 in proceeds from those sales provided fair wage employment to thirty cooperative members and additional revenues to send ten of their children to school for a year. “It was then when we realized that our vision for fair trade was one in which women receive both fair wage employment and revenues to invest in a better future for the next generation,” says Benita.

Building on their initial success, in May 2004, Benita and Ruth launched Mercado Global, a nonprofit enterprise, with the goal of providing women coop members abroad with both fair wage employment and investments in their children’s education by linking them to the U.S. market. An equally important objective was to educate young Americans to make socially responsible purchasing decisions through a network of similar student-run initiatives across the U.S. The launch of Mercado Global was made possible, in part, through a grant Benita and Ruth received from the Echoing Green Foundation. Since then, other donors have joined in support of the initiative, with in-kind contributions coming from a variety of sources.

In its first year, Mercado Global created a mail-order catalogue and website (see: www.mercadoglobal.org) to help market the crafts produced by its partner cooperatives. A number of regional and national retailers were approached to feature Mercado Global’s handmade goods and student groups across the country marketed the crafts on their campuses.

Now, Benita and Ruth are concentrating on linking their partner cooperatives with national retailers, with whom they can develop an exclusive, highly marketable product. To date, the two have successfully linked a ceramics cooperative to a popular retail chain, ABC Carpet and Home, and are currently in discussion with Aveda, a beauty products retailer, to market hand-woven cosmetic bags.

In the future, Benita says she’d like to grow Mercado Global into an organization that promotes locally controlled development in low-income countries through facilitating access to the U.S. market. “We plan to fulfill the ‘global’ vision our namesake and work with women’s cooperatives in Chiapas, Mexico, Ecuador, and India,” she adds.

Mercado Global’s enterprising founders also plan to pioneer the concept of “consumer philanthropy,” through which consumers – as a result of money spent on purchases – contribute to scholarships for young people who can’t afford to attend school. “Our unique financial model allows us to tell customers exactly how many dollars of their purchase are going towards our partner cooperatives’ long-term development,” says Benita, “this is providing U.S. consumers with a unique way to bring together their purchasing and giving.”

Back to Youth Development