Mar 9, 2008

Company builds success through fair tradeBy Laura HancockDeseretNews.com

At the gift shop inside the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City, a handful of necklaces — both long and short — are on display by the register. The long necklaces have big, bold-colored beads. The short necklaces consist of multiple strands of tiny pastel beads.

The long necklaces, priced at about $50, are selling faster, says the store’s supervisor, Larissa Thompson.

“Men buy some of them as gifts, but it’s a pretty bold jewelry, so ladies usually buy it for themselves,” she says.

The necklaces are from Africa, and a purchaser gets a small card explaining where the necklace is from, who made it and that the purchaser is participating in fair trade.

The necklaces come from a company in Salt Lake City: A Gift to Africa. Sabina Zunguze, who was born in what is now Zimbabwe, started her fair-trade business to connect women in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Cameroon with markets for their products in Utah, Colorado, Idaho, California and beyond. In addition to jewelry, Zunguze sells clothing, art, stationery, religious artifacts and dolls.

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