Hampton Bays Business Lends a Helping Hand to Orphans in Africa

Pattye Pece had a dream to help educate and provide food for children who have been orphaned due to the devastating AIDS epidemic in African countries. In 2003, she made that dream come true, when she helped start the in Hampton Bays.

This small building sits in the Hamlet Green section, set back off Main Street, just east of the Regal Cinema in Hampton Bays. It is the perfect place to shop for all your Christmas presents, knowing that at the same time you are helping those in need. This store has a variety of hand-made crafts from artists and individuals in 35 developing countries, ranging from organic coffee, tea, and chocolate to jewelry, handbags and clothes. They also feature home décor items, children's toys, musical instruments, artwork and religious items, as hand-carved nativities, crosses and statues.

Pece explained that the World Village Fair Trade Market only sells things from Fair Trade countries, which include developing countries as Peru, Guatemala, Nepal, Viet Nam, India, Cambodia, Thailand, and Kenya.

Fair Trade means that there has been no exploitation, and that people have been paid fairly, in a healthy and safe workplace, in a sustainable environment. There has also been no child labor or sweatshop, it has been supportive of their unique cultures, and it is a long-term partnership.

"We're a non-profit organization, called Sobornost For The World Foundation," said Pece, who is the president.

Sobornost, she said, means unity of heart,  mind and soul in Russian.  She found the word in a book she read.

Pece explained that her foundation has two missions. "We want to provide the Long Island community with a fair trade market and we want to provide education and food for the orphaned children from AIDS in Sub Sahara Africa, which is below Egypt."

She said most of the global poverty is in this region, which has an estimated 14 million orphans of the AIDS virus.

"Our work is to feed these children and get them out of poverty and the only way to do this is through education," said Pece, adding that as a Catholic person of faith, she learned about the global poverty issue and how people are living on less than $2.00 a day.

"I learned that fair trade was a concrete way to alleviate global poverty and I felt it was necessary to provide for these orphans and to go to Africa to meet them," she said.

In 2007, she traveled to Zambia, after meeting a missionary priest, who gave her some contacts there. She also works with Peggy McDermott, vice president and co-founder of her World Foundation, who has been going to both Zambia and Kenya since 2003.

Their foundation worked to help some of the 350 orphans between the two African countries and they managed to build small, multi-purpose school buildings in Kenya, with kitchens to feed the children while they are in school.

They also bought big concrete covers for the wells in Africa, to protect the drinking water.

Pece said she has also been involved in a fund-raising effort for these projects and last year, her foundation held its first fundraising dinner at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Hampton Bays, where they garnered about $5,000. 

Pece said she was thrilled to be able to help the people of Africa.

"I was so happy to be able to meet these orphaned children, who were so lovely and well behaved. They just wanted to go to school and they have great dreams to become lawyers, doctors and accountants," she said. "We even put a few of them through college, which is very expensive over there."

Pece said at the World Village Fair Trade Market, they use only volunteers to run the store and after their rent and operating expenses, they donate the rest of the money to the World Foundation.

Pece's store is part of the Fair Trade Federation, consisting of 250 wholesale and retail stores around the country, all working toward the same goal of giving more people in the world the opportunity to sell their goods at a fair price.

So far, the only such stores on Long Island are in Hampton Bays and  another new one opening in Stonybrook Village. 

The World Village Fair Trade Market in Hampton Bays, located at 101 West Montauk Hwy., Suite 4, in the Hamlet Green, is open Mon., Wed. and Thurs. from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., on Fri. and Sat. from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and on Sun. from 1-5 p.m. For more information, call (631) 728-7880.