agift2africa Gives Back

Are you looking for a Christmas gift that also gives back? Look no further than Salt Lake City's agift2africa.com. This company was started back in 2005 by Sabina Zunguze

with the aim of helping African women develop their businesses and improve their lives. Zunguze, a native of Zimbabwe, employs over 300 women in nearly a dozen African Countries and Peru. She takes their native crafts and creates marketable jewelry, and house wares by choosing colors and styles she knows American and European women will like. She has a wonderful sense of style and everything she sells is handmade and therefore one of a kind. She has a little shop on 800 South and 400 West, but mostly she sells her stunning items from her web site and through museum stores and select gift shops. Of course everything Zunguze does is fair trade. Fair trade offers artisans and farmers in the developing world — including Africa, Asia and Latin America — a "fair price" for their goods that are exported to industrialized nations in North America, Europe and Australia. The prices are higher than the average prices offered in traditional free trade. Companies that engage in fair trade also seek to ensure that working conditions for the artisans and farmers are safe and healthy and that the methods of farming or production are environmentally sustainable. "For me, it was all passion," Zunguze says. "I'm not thinking about the business." For many of the women artisans in Africa, Zunguze has helped raise their income from less than $1 a day to $6 to $8 a day — income that provides three meals for families each day, sends children to school and purchases roofs on buildings. You can feel the passion when you visit with Sabina and when you give this kind of a gift you know you can actually change lives.