As it’s Fair Trade Month, we at ydt want to share with you another fair trade all-star in Los Angeles. The S.P.I.R.A.L. Foundation (which stands for Spinning Potential Into Resources and Love) in the Pacific Palisades demonstrates just how fruitful fair trade can be.

S.P.I.R.A.L. holds training workshops in Vietnam and Nepal, teaching people handicrafts – they’ve trained 1,000 locals so far. By selling their handmade designs, the folks who make them, with the foundation’s help, finance humanitarian and educational projects in their own neighborhoods.

Here’s where Angelenos come in. Through S.P.I.R.A.L.’s online shop (as well as a few local retailers like All Shades ofGreen in Silver Lake ), you can help ensure that artisans are paid a fair wage and play a part in improving their communities.

Some of the projects S.P.I.R.A.L. has had a hand in include Healing The Wounded Heart Shop in Hue, Vietnam whose proceeds fund heart surgeries for children there who can’t afford them. It has also orchestrated countless small victories like providing health insurance, facilitating language classes and medical clinics, paying teachers’ salaries, and vaccinating hundreds of people every year.

S.P.I.R.A.L. has a wide collection of lovely, environmentally-sound goods to choose from, in particular their recycled collection of bags and containers made from food

wrappers and small bowls made from discarded telephone wire, all of which make trash look exquisite. Plus, it carries clothes, scarves, bags, and hats made from totally natural fibers like silk and yak’s wool.

Shop the whole collection of S.P.I.R.A.L.’s fair trade home and fashion accessories here.

Tags: Fair Trade home, handicrafts, S.P.I.R.A.L. foundation