Global Village Nanaimo has opened up a spring pop-up shop that will be open all month, with new fair-trade products including baskets from Ghana, aprons from Turkey and more.
The pop-up store is open until May 29 at Country Club Centre.
Global Village Nanaimo is a non-profit, now entering 28 years in the community, which opens a volunteer-run fair trade store twice a year, bringing affordable products from around the world to Nanaimo.
Joan Hiemstra, Global Village Nanaimo's executive director, said the store's Kantha blankets from India have been popular among buyers this spring, as well as bamboo socks and greeting cards with pressed flowers.
"Global Village imports directly from the co-operatives, we deal directly with each group of people," she said. "Sometimes it's a large co-operative, sometimes it is as small as a single family and we import directly, we cut out as many middle man as we possibly can and in many cases there aren't any."
Since items come directly from the countries, they bypass U.S. tariffs. Each item is labelled with the country it comes from, and some products contain stories about the co-operative which designs them.
"We've got new things from Turkey … aprons and embroidered cotton tea towels and re-purposed," Hiemstra said. "These are some ladies who take recycled materials and turn them into things … they only hire women who never had a job before, because in Turkey that's a challenge for women to get their first job."
While all the products are fair trade, Hiemstra said the store does take recommendations about what customers would like to see – which has led Global Village Nanaimo on a multi-year mission for fair-trade tea infusers that she said are finally available.
"I've had people ask where to put their loose tea leaves when they're making tea and I've never been able to provide a fair trade one, and we finally do, we've got one and it's very nice."
For herself personally, Hiemstra said she likes the wide assortment of Kenyan teas, as well as Palestinian olive oil.
"It's something we're proud we've been able to do."
For more information about Global Village Nanaimo, people can visit www.globalvillagenanaimo.com.
