By Paula Day

Are shopping for gifts and feeding the poor incompatible? Not for those supporting Window to the World International Gifts.

Recently opened in Atlanta's Virginia Highland neighborhood, the non-profit gift shop is an enterprise with a social conscience.

Featuring crafts from Third World countries, the shop's wares include linens from India, baskets from the Philippines, tapestries from Peru, Christmas ornaments and crèches from Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh and the occupied West Bank in Israel. The shop's inventory boasts folk art, musical instruments, wood and onyx carvings and brassware.

The articles are imported through SELFHELP Crafts of the World, a non-profit program of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). The relief and service agency is an outreach of the North American Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Churches.

The alternative trade organization has two goals: to provide jobs for unemployed or underemployed people from these countries, many of whom are widows or refugees, and to educate North Americans about the substandard economic conditions in these countries.

"Every $1,000 worth of goods sold here provides a job for a year in the Third World," commented Karen Gross, president of the board of directors of the Atlanta shop.

Table linens woven by lepers and their families who live ostracized from Indian society are on display. Greeting cards from Sri Lanka where manufactured colored paper is scarce, flaunt their bright, spray-painted colors.

Much of the craftsmanship is passed from generation to generation. A Kenyan family carves giraffes and zebras. A family in Cameroon makes musical instruments from gourds.

"Shopping at Window to the World literally feeds some of the world's most economically disadvantaged people," store manager Marg Lambert says. Purchases can be a dual gift -- to the person for whom it is bought and the artisans for whom it provides a livelihood she said.

SELFHELP Crafts has guiding principles, among them, to work to insure fair wages, to purchase directly from the producing groups, to care for the environment and to offer free marketing advice to the producers.

The program involves over 35,000 craftspeople and their families in more than 35 developing countries. Artisans in the country of origin set the original purchase price for their crafts and then SELFHELP Crafts' operation costs are added. Craftsmen are paid up front before their crafts come to this country. Once a producer is established, SELFHELP seeks out another group.

Approximately 120 MCC-related shops in North America account for nearly half of all sales of SELFHELP Crafts. Window to the World, the only shop in Georgia, is located at 1056 St. Charles Ave. It is open Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information call Ms. Lambert at 404-892-5307.