This is a guest post by Laura Bucci, who knits and sews bags. You can find her at her arts & crafts blog.

I must admit that I prefer to buy foreign craft items when I’m actually visiting the country of origin as opposed to buying them in my home country. There’s something missing when these items are sold out of context. Right now, I’m thinking specifically about Latin American crafts since that’s where I’ve traveled to in the last few years. I feel there’s a lot that I’m not getting by not having seen the people, the landscape, the country, the culture where the piece is made.

In one of my the trips to Guatemala, I bought two small embroidery wall hangings. Although I did not meet the women who made these pieces, throughout Guatemala it is easy to spot Mayan  women working on the streets or craft markets (as seen in top picture). By being exposed to the culture, and through dialogues with shop owners,  my appreciation of my newly purchased embroideries was greatly increased.  And now when I look at my Mayan embroideries at home, images of the place, the women, and the culture flood back.

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Chi Chi Amor was founded by two anthropologist mothers Danielle O’Connor and Shari Feldman.  “Chi Chi” refers to the town of Chichicastenango, Guatemala, where textiles are produced.  “Amor” of course means love in Spanish, and it expresses for Danielle and Sheri, “the realization of our idea, our friendship, the expression of our feelings for Guatemala and its people, and the deep love that we feel for our children and families…that’s Amor!”

I particularly love the worry doll pants. These sweet pants are made from the traditional Mayan corte skirt fabric.  Beautiful embroidered flowers adorn the pant legs, and a special surprise of worry dolls reside in the pockets.  If you are not familiar with worry dolls, they are small Guatemalan folk dolls that are used to ease children’s anxieties.  Children who have trouble going to sleep can tell the doll their worries, place them under their pillow, then rest peacefully as the doll does the worrying for them.  With all of the anxiety of childhood, having worry dolls in one’s pockets would be handy to deal with the rational and irrational fears of life.

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Editor’s note: Looking for a travel experience a bit more exotic (and meaningful) than the traditional trip to the beach or lakeside resort? Our friends at email tip service Vital Juice Daily have some suggestions today.

If you’re jealous of Angelina Jolie’s exotic globetrotting to save the world, you might consider a volunteer vacation (Brad Pitt not included) … help yourself while helping others! What could be better than that (besides Brad Pitt)?

1. Make it count

With Global Volunteers, you can teach conversational English in Italy; paint, build, and repair buildings in Costa Rica; care for at-risk children in Romania; revitalize communities in small American towns; and much more. Global Volunteers’ goal is to “wage peace by facilitating mutual international understanding,” and that sounds pretty good to us!

2. "Swank"y travel

Last summer, Hilary Swank volunteered at an orphanage in North India with United Planet, an organization that creates international volunteer programs. They offer trips lasting from 1-52 weeks in 50 countries worldwide. Check out their new initiative to help battered women and their children at a shelter in Guatemala.

3. Volunteer as a family

Cross Cultural Solutions offers weeklong Insight Abroad trips to take as a family. This unique program exposes children to a different culture and provides an incomparable opportunity for them to learn the value of hands-on volunteerism. Trips are offered in Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and Russia … perfect fodder for the inevitable “What did you do during your summer vacation?”

4. Make it green

Starting to worry about how all that international air travel will impact the environment? Through Climate Friendly™ you can buy energy credits to offset the emissions from your flight. A simple emissions calculator lets you figure out exactly how to offset the carbon trail of your travel (and make Al Gore proud!).

"Coffee Talk" will include information on global market prices, growing and processing techniques, and the benefits of organic crop certification. Dean’s Beans founder, Dean Cycon, wanted to reach out to rural, farming co-operatives with limited access to television, print media and internet and give them information and tools they can use to improve their livelihoods through knowledge of the international coffee market.

The program is in association with Cultural Survival’s newly launched the Guatemala Radio Project as part of their efforts to protect Maya peoples access to media. Cultural Survival is working with seven Guatemalan based organizations and 150 community radio stations to improve quality and effectiveness of the programming, to upgrade broadcasting equipment, and to help make these stations financially viable.

Helping farmers understand the fairtrade process (and their rights within that process) is important, but the information isn’t always readily available or disseminated, even by fair trade organizations like the Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO), TransFair, and Fair Trade Federation (FTF). According to a Cultural Survival publication:

To many small growers, however, “fair trade” means nothing more than that they receive a “fair price”—or more than the price they would get from the coyotes who buy the ceresa (the unprocessed fruit that contains the coffee beans) from them on the street. Many growers do not recognize the term “fair trade” or understand how the system works. Even farmers who belong to a cooperative sometimes don’t fully understand the system—something that hits home when the world market price for coffee rises above the fair trade price, and growers’ coops struggle to deliver the quantities they have promised to their buyers.

To succeed in fair trade, coffee farmers need to know as much about the production and supply chain as the brokers, roasters, and labeling organizations. TransFair and FLO are heading in this direction. These organizations held workshops this year in Guatemala to help cooperative members better understand contracts, market fluctuation, and internal marketing so managers can better communicate with farmers. This education is essential to the success of the system; without it, the educational and resource disparities that marginalize indigenous peoples and small coffee farmers will be reinforced by fair trade.

"Coffee Talk" is another avenue of getting this information to farmers.

Via CSRwire.com; Dean’s Beans; Cultural Survival