While adding some new vendors, the organizers of the 19th annual Fiesta World Craft Bazaar this Saturday promise that your old favourites are back.
Canada’s largest fair trade global craft fair on both floors of the Filberg Centre in Courtenay this Saturday from 10 to 4 includes the Ten Thousand Villages Store, which will take over the Evergreen Lounge downstairs with its largest display ever.
You will be transported around the globe, with the beauty, variety and skill that the artisans of the world have handed down for thousands of years. This year they have new food products, including quinoa and tropical juices.
Comercio Justo just keeps getting bigger as they partner with ever more co-operatives in Guatemala; watch Greg Vivian of Cumberland demonstrate their new wooden yoyos. Their woven shirts and coats are a must for these cold days.
Lynda Drury and Floating Stone will again wow you with the creativity and classy look of their Cambodian silk creations. Check out their new scarves.
The African Fair Trade Society will be back with their popular shea butter products. Lora McMartin and her Sola Luna Imports have expanded considerably and offer a lovely variety of low-cost, but quality wares.
If you are looking for a new carpet, Small World Imports specializes in Tibetan rugs. These rugs are made without child labour or harmful dyes and crafted by a family-run venture in Nepal, where many Tibetans have found refuge.
Fiesta has also always been about providing you with Christmas cards, thought-provoking children and adult books, posters, calendars, and agendas from New Internationalist Publishers and the Syracuse Workers Collective.
Don’t miss the poster room downstairs with hundreds of posters you won’t find anywhere else.
Art Cards, a local co-operative for those with developmental disabilities, will sell their dazzling handmade cards. You will also be able to make Christmas more peaceful by choosing a Cooperative Board Game by Family Pastimes, the world’s leader in co-operative games.
The Glacier and Merville Grannies will again support the grandmothers of Africa by selling their exquisite angels, art cards, wreaths and more. L’Arche will sell a new selection of soup mixes and their gorgeous candles. Drop of Hope will sell delicate glass tear drops to raise money for water and educational projects in Kenya.
KEEF, a locally founded organization providing post-secondary support for young men and women in Kenya will have a lovely array of East African jewelry and soapstone carvings.
The Fiesta restaurant will feature, as our local El Salvadorian community lovingly creates a lunch you won’t soon forget. There will be a variety of foods from Asia to the Comox Valley. The Comox Valley Land Trust will be serving tasty sweets and hot apple juice and fair trade tea and coffee.
— Fiesta World Craft Bazaar