Tragically, Santiago Atitlan, a 95-percent-indigenous town with around 40,000 inhabitants, illustrates well the injustice that confronts many rural indigenous Guatemalans. It is located in a region that was particularly hard-hit by the thirty-six-year internal armed conflict that plagued Guatemala from 1960 to 1996. The war, which was especially intense in the 1980s, and a history of systematic social marginalization have left most women in Santiago with few marketable skills. Only five of the over 200 women I have worked with over the years are literate or semi-literate. Only six speak sufficient Spanish (the rest speak only the local language of Tzutujil) to communicate adequately with ladino (non-indigenous) employers. Typical employment options for many women consist of domestic work such as washing laundry and sweeping or the production of handicraft using either traditional weaving and embroidery or more recently acquired beading techniques. A World Bank study found that employment in the domestic services sector in Guatemala substantially increases the likelihood that an individual (and her family) will live in poverty. Clearly, domestic work does not present a path out of poverty for most women in Santiago. Thus, the women face the choice of persistent poverty as a domestic employee or the uncertainties of handicraft production. It is clear, therefore, that the women's exquisite embroidery represents the skill that is most likely to provide them with economic opportunity. Since the advent of my work in Santiago in Spring 2004, however, the need for a new market for traditional handicraft skills has been apparent. The current market wage for embroidery is not enough to feed a family, much less adequately house and clothe it. The local tourist market for traditional embroidered goods is flooded because so much of the female population of Santiago embroiders beautiful birds, flowers, and other designs for a living. Moreover, the majority of the revenue for these products accrues to local middlemen who dominate the main points of access to tourist buyers, namely the dock area and the main road leading to the center of town. While a small number of women in Santiago benefit from traditional fair trade handicraft production, it is not enough to make a sizeable impact on the community. A 2005 survey of families working with my organization found that, of families with artisans as primary or secondary bread winners, 90 percent survive on less than a dollar a day per person (the World Bank's global standard for "extreme poverty"). Of those families fortunate enough to avoid "extreme poverty," all survive on incomes well below the two-dollar a day standard for "poverty." In the aftermath of the October 2005 mudslide caused by Hurricane Stan, many of these same people are living in tents, still making their dollar a day through handicraft production, but unable to find the capital to construct new houses. Just Apparel aims to support and enhance the skills of these women by connecting them directly to a market willing to pay them a fair wage for their hard work.

Just Apparel represents an innovative approach to fair trade. We provide ethically produced, customized, hand-embroidered products at affordable prices while offering economic opportunity to our partner artisans in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. Rather than marketing traditional handicrafts which are in excess supply all over Latin America, Just Apparel utilizes traditional skills and connects them with a broader mainstream market. After a year of work in Guatemala, Just Apparel has evolved into a sustainable micro-enterprise that is able to receive and process large quantities of orders. The main task ahead of Just Apparel is to raise awareness of Just Apparel as a viable fair trade option for customized apparel. Just Apparel partners with Asociacion Ropa Justa, a legally recognized group of artisan women in Santiago Atitlán. The Association works with a local tailor to make the t-shirts, sweatshirts, polos, and tote-bags. Then, in accordance with cultural work patterns, the women take the products and embroider them in their homes. In this way, the women are able to attend to household chores and childcare while they work. When they have finished the embroidery, they bring it back to the central office of the Association, and the products are sent to our customers in the US. Just Apparel provides a living wage to its partner artisans ensuring that they are able to support themselves and their families. Furthermore, we believe that economic enterprise should benefit the entire community. Therefore, 90 percent of net profits are invested in community projects that address local issues as identified by our partner artisans, such as local initiatives in education, health, and technology.

Before beginning Just Apparel, my cofounder and I had spent significant time in Santiago Atitlán working in various projects with the International Humanitarian Foundation (IHF). We built relationships with many of the local artisan women and their families, and we observed their frustration with not being able to sell their handicrafts and support their families. The women wanted to work, but the market for their handicrafts was small and wages for such work were very low. On a visit to my university, a local leader looked around and said, “Everyone here is wearing Haverford tshirts. Why don’t we have the women embroider t-shirts that say Haverford and put a little bird on the side?” In trying to find a way to raise incomes while being attentive to the local culture, we had stumbled upon the large market for customized apparel in the United States. We realized that the artisans of Santiago Atitlán could embroider things like school, organizational, or company names on sweatshirts and t-shirts. These products would reach an entirely different market than the one for conventional handicrafts but would still utilize the women’s traditional skills. Once the idea was born, we set about putting our ideas into action. The first thing we had to do was select a group of women that would partner with Just Apparel to embroider the apparel. We held an embroidery contest to select fifteen women. The women were selected based on a combination of need and ability with several community leaders, my cofounder, and me as judges. We then worked with local suppliers and FedEx trade networks to solidify the supply and distribution channels and simultaneously worked with the women to standardize quality. Finally, we launched a website in January 2008 where consumers in the US could purchase goods and learn about our work. Once we began sales in January we immediately realized that the biggest challenge facing Just Apparel is marketing. We are working with volunteer promoters around the U.S. to get the word out about a fair trade source for hand-embroidered customized apparel. We hope to see Just Apparel become a recognized name in fair trade apparel, and the ultimate goal is to have enough orders so that the association of women can grow and continue to support themselves, their families, and their community. Just Apparel has successfully supported 25 women and their families since January with a fair wage for steady work. Of course, we hope to provide even more work in the near future for many more women and their familes. We have also provided scholarships for 25 high-schoolers in the Santiago area and through our Just Apparel Community Investment Program hope to continue to offer more scholarships and more small grants to other community-focused projects.

We are a small organization of committed volunteers, but our personal networks are only so large, so the most important thing that others can do for our project is to help raise awareness about this alternative way of purchasing clothing. By making the commitment to help promote Just Apparel, you can have a significant effect in improving the standards of living of the talented Just Apparel artisans. The more people and organizations that know about Just Apparel, the more we can work to create a bridge between unfair and just.