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Health & Fitness

Blogger: Let's Get To Know One Another

There are so many ways we can change our world for the better.

Greetings readers of Riverhead Patch! We would like to introduce ourselves and get to know you.

We are members of Sobornost For The World Foundation and World Village Fair Trade Market. Okay, let's start with that word sobornost. What does it mean? It has a few meanings in Russian, but here's the one we have adopted: a community having one heart-mind-soul, working together for the common good. It comes from a book entitled, "Sobornost" written by a Russian woman, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, who I met in 1979 in Canada.

Sobornost For The World Foundation was created by a few Long Island residents and myself in 2003 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with two missions. One of its missions is to run a full retail called World Village Fair Trade Market, packed with fair trade products which help to sustain the lives of producers and growers world-wide who would otherwise be living in severe poverty. The store is open five days a week from 10 a.m to 5 p.m., all year, by a staff of volunteers. We are joyfully coming up on our 10th anniversary and are completely amazed that our fair trade store has been able to grow and support hundreds of people all over the world because people continue to shop with us throughout the year.  

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The other mission of Sobornost is to support and care for little children left orphaned by the AIDS virus in sub-Sahara Africa. When we first heard that there were 14 million orphans in sub-Sahara Africa from the AIDS virus, we couldn't imagine how they would be able to support themselves, ever go to school or eat. This moved our hearts to try and do whatever we could from here. Our fundraising, or the contributions we receive, help us feed, educate and supply most of what the children need to grow up in a healthy and hopeful way. Presently we support close to 400 children in two countries: Kenya and Zambia. The children are mostly pre-school age in Kenya, while in Zambia, they are older children attending secondary school. Our work with the children of Kenya covers a few different areas out in the rural areas southwest of Nairobi and is a little less expensive to support than in Zambia. Our orphans in Zambia are in the capital city of Lusaka, which is much more expensive.

Having these two missions is challenging and rewarding at the same time. The volunteers who run it are still with us since the beginning and they are exceptional people. The International Programs Director, Peggy, was in the Peace Corps and is currently a teacher in Nassau County, while her husband, Sean, is a School Psychologist. The two travel together, at their own expense, to continue our programs for the children in Africa. Peggy and Sean are both board members for the non-profit. Jonathan runs his own business in Patchogue and has given his time and talents to Sobornost in so many ways, but he primarily is our Chief Financial Officer.  Our store volunteers, Eileen, Gretchen, Debbie, Wendy, Gayle, Marie and myself, continue to work in the store one day or half-day a week each, answering phones, keeping our shelves stocked and our customers smiling. I can't say enough about these dedicated and enthusiastic people!

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My role in the non-profit is Co-Founder and President. Although I was the person inspired to begin this non-profit after knowing a missionary priest from England named Fr. Patrick Fitzgerald who always said: "All life is a risk and all we have to do is to launch out into the deep," it understandably took more people to actually bring it about. In the beginning, we had different people (or maybe they were angels?) bringing all the right things at the right time to help us get the business going.  There was a lawyer named Dan, who helped us create the non-profit on paper and who helped us write our mission statement free of charge. Then came a woman in Nassau County, Marge, who offered her bookkeeping skills to us for the first four years and who wanted to do it without pay. Gary and Debbie from Blue Point gave us $700 to buy our first credit card machine, and the list continues until today. It is a never-ending story of caring individuals who show up at the perfect time.

As we get to know one another through Riverhead Patch, I will share more with you about our Foundation, fair trade and why we chose to go in the directions we went. For now, we wanted to tell you how happy we are to have the opportunity to blog on Riverhead Patch so you could learn about our two missions.  We'd love to have you visit us, even though we are in Hampton Bays.  Unfortunately, with a small staff and the necessity to keep our expenses under control, we can't yet afford to open a store in Riverhead or nearby, but we talk about it almost every week!  One day we hope to see a second store open in or around Riverhead so we can grow our mission there as well. There is one way you can join with us in the meantime to help if you wish:  ask us to come to do a table sale or a talk at your place of business, school, church or community event. We do this often and it helps us to share the joy of our two missions. We've been to Stony Brook University, St. Joseph's College, Suffolk Community College, Lions Club of the North Shore, synogogues, churches and schools across Long Island, etc. Why not Riverhead?

Find us at:

World Village Fair Trade Market, 101 W. Montauk Highway, Suite 4 - Hamlet Green, Hampton Bays, NY  11946.  631-728-7880.  www.fairtrademarket.org.  

On Facebook at:  

Pattye Pece or World Village Fair Trade or Sobornost For The World Foundation (cause page).  

On Twitter at:  

@Fairtrading or @Sobornost

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