“Fair Trade” stores around Iowa are doing their part to help tsunami victims in Thailand, Indonesia and the rest of that part of the world. Christine McNunn is co-owner of one of a handful of stores that sell goods made in other countries in an arrangment to send more of the money to the original producers. All their merchandise is from countries where people have formed co-ops to sell goods and make sure people who made them get most of the money. McNunn explains in traditional retail, about 2-percent of the money you spend on goods in a store goes to the people who produced the goods. In the Fair Trade system somewhere between 20 and 40-percent of the retail price goes back to the people. More people are hearing about coffee sold in fair-trade programs on a seasonal basis, but McNunn says there’s a wide array of merchandise. She calls the idea “anti-sweatshop” because people are helping themselves with the concept and sell furniture, potery, handicrafts, handbags, toys, chocolate and coffee from about 40 countries. Most of those countries are in less-developed parts of the world including South America, Africa and southeast Asia. She explains what happens is a nonprofit group decides to help a particular region of the world so they go organize local people to supply items they’ll sell in the US. The residents decide whether profits from their products will benefit local families or go for a community cause like schools or a public water system. Iowa’s five fair-trade shops contacted each other and agreed this weekend they’ll declare Sunday a special event, and sent 100-percent of their profits on everything sold that day to the “Ten Thousand Villages Asia Earthquake Fund.” McNunn says the Ten-Thousand Villages program that originated the idea is an organization set up by Mennonites. Ten Thousand Villages supplies goods sold by the Iowa group of “fair trade” stores, and with years in the practice they were among the first groups to set up a fund for victims. Since they already had people in place in the countries hit by the disaster, they were ahead of other organizations — they didn’t have to go set up a network of workers. The 10-Thousand Villages organization answered the Iowa shopkeepers request for ideas by suggesting they hold a special day and give all their profits to the disaster fund. At the end of the day they’ll take money from everything they sold, subtract wages of the workers, and donate all the rest. The Fair Trade retailers include stores in West Des Moines, Orange City, Cedar Falls, Pella and Ames. For more information surf to http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/ or fairworldgallery-dot-com. (http://www.fairworldgallery.com/catalog/index.php )