Birmingham woman runs free trade business

Melissa Kendrick was about to turn 40 when she did what many folks do: take stock in her life.

She thought about what was important to her… Made her happy…and made her sad.

She then came up with a business idea that included travel and meeting new people. But it also did something to battle bigotry, narrow-mindedness and lack of world awareness. 

Her dream business sits in the middle of downtown Birmingham.

In the 1920s, 217 North 20th Street was home to the OK Barbershop for gentlemen. There must have been 20 chairs and 20 barbers in the shop.

A lot has changed since then, and now the OK Barbershop is a unique establishment called Sojourns. It’s a fair trade store and gallery.

“Fair trade is basically the opposite of sweat shops,” Kendrick said.  “The idea is to pay artisan a fair and living wage for the work that they do, there’s no forced labor, no child labor and everything is environmentally stable.“

Melisssa Kendrick has traveled to several continents to meet the men and woman who create the one-of- a-kind items that she has in her store. She is a member of the Fair Trade Federation and only stocks items that were created by fairly paid and fairly treated.

I asked Melissa to tell us about some of the items in the store.

“This is recycled newspaper…. It’s 100 percent newspaper and it’s made in the Philippines and is made by a group up in the mountains of the Philippines about 3 hours away from a large city and any form of electricity.“

“They use the larger gourds for drinking cups and dipping water out of the river, but the small ones become decorative and these are vegetable dyes and they use hot sticks to actually burn their design on there and the vegetable dye is coated on there….and it’s all natural products and these are from Peru.

“Mow, after Melissa has educated me today, I could talk awhile about batik or give my views on Peruvian pottery, but it may not surprise you that as an Indiana farm boy what really caught my eye was stationary made out of elephant dung.

“For me this not how I earn my living,” Kendrick said. “I work a full-time job to pay my bills. This is how I contribute to a better world by giving people in marginalized societies an opportunity to work their way out of poverty, so I want to make sure the work I’m doing is having an impact.“

There are fun items like finger puppets…… and beautiful handmade scarves made by hand in Nepal.  All of the items unique and unlike items you’ll find in other stores.

“And, the idea is the more you know about people, the less you are going to judge them or have preconceived notions about them,” Kendrick said. “So, that’s what we want the store to do, we use art as a bridge as a cultural understanding to gain some insight into the artisans.