Sending Joy and Support From Oklahomans:
PAMBE Ghana’s Global Market Backs La’Angum Learning Center

 
PAMBE Ghana’s Global Market opened on November 1st in a beautiful space donated by the Sherman family of Oklahoma City. This generous family along with volunteers and donors from OKC have embraced the meaning of La’Angum- “Many Hands Make Light Work” and are joining to make the Global Market a reality.
 
Located at 7908 N. Western, the Global Market will be open through December 24th.
 
What can customers expect when entering the doors of PAMBE Ghana’s Global Market? As they walk in, they will see an array of unique fair trade items from around the world. They will no doubt come across something delightful that they haven’t seen before. And, they will be greeted by volunteers who support the mission of PAMBE Ghana.
 
By making a purchase, customers are sending joy and support from Oklahoma to children and their families in a small place far away, because all profits from the Global Market go to support and enhance La’Angum Learning Center. In addition, buying fair trade arts insures that the artisans receive a fair price for their work.
 
PAMBE Ghana began in Oklahoma City in 2008 with the dream of an OCU graduate, Alice Azumi Iddi-Gubbels. Her dream: build a model of quality basic education in an underserved area of northern Ghana. Oklahoma City friends embraced Alice’s vision and began the fair trade Global Market to make her dream come true. The La’Angum Learning Center has flourished through partnerships with local villages in Ghana and her friends and supporters in Oklahoma and Canada.

 

Listen to Alice Iddi-Gubbels and Linda Temple discuss PAMBE Ghana's mission and the Global Market in a video made by Nate Fein, of OU Nightly.

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For the past twelve years, the Global Market has provided Oklahomans with an opportunity to purchase unique art and unusual gifts made by artisans in developing countries, while supporting an elementary school in northern Ghana.

Items in the shop are purchased from all over the world and come directly from artisans and producers, or are purchased through fair trade businesses (members of the Fair Trade Federation or TransFair USA). Artisans and producers are paid a fair price for their product when it leaves their hands. Fair Trade criteria also guarantees safe working conditions, quality control, marketing assistance, no child labor, and a continuing, supportive relationship between sellers and buyers.

Proceeds from the Market go to La’Angum Learning Center, a school for children in pre-school through sixth grade in rural northern Ghana. The school’s founder, Alice Iddi-Gubbels, first came to Oklahoma City in 2000 with her husband, Peter, who worked at World Neighbors. While here, Alice earned a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education from Oklahoma City University, as well as certification in Montessori Teaching. While teaching in the primary school at Westminster, she dreamed of starting a Montessori school for children in her village in northern Ghana. In 2007 she began to realize that dream, creating PAMBE Ghana as a registered not-for-profit organization.

In 2008, the first classroom of the school was built by members of the community. It started with 40 students in pre-school, and a trained faculty of three teachers. A grade was added each year, and now there are 279 students from Pre-school through Grade 6, a staff of 23, and enough classrooms for all.

The Global Market began in 2008 as a means of introducing Oklahomans to PAMBE Ghana’s La’Angum Learning Center and to Fair Trade. This unique combination ensures that all purchases serve a triple benefit by pleasing the recipient, supporting the artist who made it, and benefiting PAMBE Ghana. Global Market volunteers are well versed about Fair Trade and about the La’Angum Learning Center and are eager to share interesting stories about Market products and the school.