Craft Sales
We plan to have a full ONLINE STORE and the times and locations of sales events on this website in the future.
In the summer of 2006, we returned from Uganda with baskets, jewelry, and a few other craft items we had purchased from Ugandan Christian women who had asked us to try to sell them in America. We offered them first at a Missions Sunday at the Vaughn Park Church of Christ, and the wonderful reception by the women at that sale prompted us to take a giant step forward in our commitment to a craft sales ministry.
Last October, we created Victoria Nile Trading Company *, a commercial enterprise that handles the craft sales business activities. Our policy in compensating the craftspeople is simple in concept: When we work directly with the artisans (as, for example, the Musima women’s group) we pay local price plus 20%, and explain that the premium over local price is to obtain their best quality. We incur costs of shipping, promotion, and administration. Then, when we sell the items in the U.S., we send half the profits on those items back to them as a group to use for purposes they choose. (In one instance, last fall we sent $100 profits back to the Musima women’s group, which they used to pay school fees and buy clothes for seven neglected children that they chose to support.
- To increase awareness of the needs of the poor throughout the Third World and of the development activities taking place at various mission sites throughout the world
- To partner with poor people in helping them support themselves and their families through business development
- To provide university students with hands-on business management experience
- To provide funding for MDM and the conduct of its business.
*Victoria Nile Trading Company is currently registered as a for-profit business in the City and County of Montgomery, and the State of Alabama. As you may know, starting a “regular” for-profit business is much easier and less costly than obtaining designation as a charitable non-profit organization (aka IRS section 501(c)3 status). It was necessary to register to conduct our business legitimately, but we thought it best to test the waters before committing resources to pursuing non-profit designation, which we intend to do in the fall of 2007. By they way, the Victoria Nile is the name given to the stretch of the Nile River from Jinja in the southeast to Lake Albert in the northwest, thus spanning the breadth of Uganda.