Sask. volunteers, staff reflect on fair trade store

"I also have to think of the positive things. When I started you could not find fair trade coffee in the grocery store, and you can now."

As Ten Thousand Villages prepares to close its doors in Saskatchewan at the end of March, one volunteer remembers her mom getting it all underway in the province in the mid-1960s.

Irma Balzer started what was then called Self-Help Crafts by driving all around the province to make presentations and take orders. She’d then copy the orders in triplicate before mailing them to artisans all over the world, who would make the pieces, said her daughter Monica Dalke.

“It would take about a year for it to arrive,” Dalke said. They lived in the Village of Laird at the time.

“The postmaster would call on the phone and say, ‘Irma, come get your boxes’ — there was no room in the little post office for all of the stuff.”

Dalke and her sister would help their mom unpack and organize the orders on weekends.

“My mom was the out front person; my dad was always sort of a background person, but he was totally behind the venture.”

Dalke doesn’t remember when it happened, but a some point “it got too big for one person,” she says, so it was moved into a warehouse.

When Dalke was working in Ontario she started volunteering at Ten Thousand Villages in her town. This continued when she retired back to Saskatchewan.

“MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) was always part of the family lore and in our history,” she said.

Now 72, Dalke has volunteered thousands of hours over her lifetime.

“I think people are much more aware of fair trade than they used to be, and I think Ten Thousand Villages has been instrumental in helping that happen.”

There are eight independent stores run by boards that will remain open in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. These, along with Villages stores in the U.S., will continue to support artisans who supplied the products, said Rick Cober Bauman, executive director of MCC Canada.

He said the conversations with the artisans was the most difficult part of closing the stores, which hadn’t turned a profit in 12 years.

“Not to diminish the impact on staff and volunteers in Canada, but artisans we know are affected and in some cases more heavily than others by these loses,” he said.

Since making the announcement, Cober Bauman said he has heard messages of sadness and thankfulness from the store’s supporters.

“We’ve gone through lots of feelings this past week. It’s like grieving,” said Carol Reimer-Wiebe, the store manager of the last MCC Ten Thousand Villages store in Saskatchewan.

“I also have to think of the positive things. When I started you could not find fair trade coffee in the grocery store, and you can now.”

That was in 1996. Since then, Reimer-Wiebe has worked in several of the stores as well as going on a learning trip to Kenya and Uganda, to meet some of the people who make the crafts and jewelry the stores sell.

“It made me really want to share those stories and to help, so people would understand what we are doing and why.”

In Saskatchewan, MCC will continue its programs with refugees, newcomers and Indigenous children and youth, Indigenous communities, and restorative justice, as well as continuing to run thrift stores in six communities in the province, said Eileen Klassen Hamm, executive director for MCC Sask.

“A lot of the communication and visual work we do here in Saskatchewan is to support MCC programming in 53 countries around the world, working in the area of food security, water security, health, education, peace building, and disaster response,” she said.

After so many years of volunteering, Dalke has lots of pieces of art and stories to remember the stores.

“I’ll miss it,” she said.