ORANGE : Nonprofit Shop Crafts Livelihood for Destitute Artisans

The woven Kenyan bags that were de rigueur for fashionable shoulders in the 1980s are not offered in the Third World Handarts showroom, but wallets made by former Thai prostitutes do quite well.

“Crafts come and go in popularity,” explained Sue Fenwick, the director of the nonprofit artisans shop incongruously located in a suburban shopping center on Batavia Street. “We’ve learned to always listen to our customers.”

That trends are fickle is just one of the lessons the Handarts directors have learned over the 20 years that the agency has managed to put capitalism to the service of charity. They will celebrate their success with open-house parties on Oct. 13 and 14.

The business, which consists of a director, a board of advisers and volunteers, is non-sectarian, but workers seek to fill the agency’s “mission” rather than turn a profit, Fenwick said. The latter is saved for the poor.

“We are always true to the mission,” explained Fenwick, who has run the agency since 1982. “We are never wanting to amass huge amounts of money. . . . The mission is survival for the destitute.”

That mission started in 1975 with an effort to help the starving poor who had survived the war in Bangladesh. A local church received an appeal for the widows of that conflict and eventually relief workers abroad helped form a crafts cooperative in Bangladesh to make goods that could be marketed in the United States.

The cooperative, the first group Handarts marketed for, now employs some 70,000 people, and Handarts still sells the woven jute angels and baskets that the workers produce. But the marketing network now includes crafts from the impoverished of 33 countries, including the United States, and sells through more than 200 congregations and women’s groups in the greater Southwest, Fenwick said.

The agency boasts a warehouse full of crafts such as ebony carvings from Tanzania, wood crosses from Israel and quilted cat dolls from displaced workers in Maine. A shop in front of the workroom displays a select variety of items--including Nativity carvings that draw collectors.

Handarts buys most of the crafts straight from the collectives and sells items for less than department stores or boutiques by “cutting out the middlemen,” Fenwick said. “It does help the poor help themselves.”

But at the heart of the market are congregations in Orange County and other places that hold “alternative” fairs at Christmas and other holidays to benefit Third world artisans.

“It is a repeat business,” said Maryellen Keating, a volunteer at the agency. “People love us to come back.”