Ten Thousand Villages Seattle

The mission of Ten Thousand Villages Seattle is to develop strong fair trade economic markets through our practices and educational outreach, in order to support artisans and craftspeople in struggling communities around the world.

Ten Thousand Villages believes that each village in the world represents a unique, distinctive group of people. Multiply the village by ten thousand and it represents the world it is working to build. The idea for the name came from a quote by Mahatama Gandhi. He said, "..India is not to be found in it's few cities but in the 700,000 villages...We have hardly even paused to inquire if these folks get sufficient to eat and cloth themselves with. "

Our store offers a distinctive selection of fairly traded handcrafts, clothing, musical instruments, home decor, coffee and art from around the world.

Ten Thousand Villages Seattle is an independent retailer of fair trade goods and educates the Seattle community on principles of fair trade. For more information on fair trade see:https://www.fairtradefederation.org/fair-trade-federation-principles/

Ten Thousand Villages Seattle regularly holds Community Shopping Events (CSE's). In which we invite local community and non-profit groups to the store to use the space to celebrate their organization and share each other's missions. A percentage of sales from the evening is donated to the group. Some examples of past CSE groups include: EarthCorps, Prospect Preschool, Heifer International, iLEAP, New Dawn Guatemala, Awamaki Women's Coop, among many others.

Ten Thousand Villages Seattle crates internship opportunities for teenagers, college students, graduate students, international guests and adults re-entering the workforce or changing careers. Interns gain important work experience such as retail, marketing, customer services, organizational and management skills. These interns have shown to benefit greatly from these experiences, learning about Seattle's role in global community, and go on to become ambassadors of fair trade.