Bolivian Cooperative (Fair Trade) Clothing

The owners of Dharma (50 years and counting) have a variety of interests, one of which is "Social Entrepreneurship". For us that means "helping people help themselves".

Having lived in the third world, what seems to work best there is to provide a way for people to earn a living and enabling them to solve their own problems. Among our projects are several sewing and weaving cooperatives in Bolivia.

We have these co-ops make clothing and accessories to our specifications. Dharma provides the money for them to buy the materials, then buys the goods at the prices they set and imports and sells the items.

To ensure that their merchandise sells well, we sell it near our cost to get it here. Dharma makes between nothing and less than usual on these items. That's why they are sometimes less expensive than similar items in our catalog. We can afford to not make much profit on these items - no big deal! The point is, it's a bargain for you, it provides work for the co-op members and we at Dharma feel good about doing it.

That's the story - there are other groups we work with too - like the weavers in Central Java that make our cotton scarves. This is just a thing we do that we hope is helping some folks while allowing us to offer you some nicely made goods that our customers can feel good about buying. 

For a detailed report on some of the other stuff we do to help, click here.