With entertainment that includes drumming, dancing, music, food and children’s programs, it’s a fair as well as a showcase for art.

    But there’s a larger mission behind the event, which will be held Saturday and Sunday: to sustain world folk art and folk artists.

    "We know that these art forms that take hand work are endangered species," said Judith Espinar, one of the market’s founders and its creative director.

    The artists who are streaming into Santa Fe from 41 countries - including embroidery from Afghanistan, weavings from Chile, felt work from Kyrgystan - also will go to two days of training in marketing and running their businesses. That program is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which also gave the market nearly $1 million, part of it earmarked to train interns from southern Africa to start their own markets.

    There’s also a separate showcase before the market for dealers _ sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization _ at which artists can take bulk orders.

    The show is juried, with artists selected by a committee of folk art experts.

    "It’s a prestigious gathering of artists from all corners of the world, some who come from very daunting circumstances," said Charlene Cerny, the market’s executive director and former head of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe.

    Many of the artists represent cooperatives or other community-based groups, and the profits that go home with them are shared.

    Ilma Paixao started a cooperative a few years ago with lace makers of the Xuquru tribe of northeastern Brazil. Proceeds from the folk art market _ which accounts for about 80 percent of the lace makers’ sales _ have been used for toothbrushes and school supplies for village children, a seed bank for farmers, college tuition for two young women and computer courses for others, she said.

    Sales of the Handeira Project’s lace garments and linens also has provided much-needed income to poor families who otherwise rely solely on farming, which is difficult in the arid area, Paixao said.

    "It’s one of the ways the women find to be able to work and still take care of the family," said Paixao, a Brazilian-American who is in the urban studies department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    Proceeds from this year’s market will be used to reach out to the tribe’s other 23 villages and involve them in the lace-making project, she said.

    Last year the market had 14,000 visitors and $1.3 million in sales.

    "There’s nothing like it. I’ve been in the business 20 years," said Hank Lee, a collector and gallery owner in San Antonio, Texas. He’s on the market’s board and spent time this year in Hungary and Ecuador checking out artists for future markets.

    "What a global reach we’ve had in such a short time _ it’s really mind-boggling," said Lee, who volunteers his time.

    Dealing directly with artists gives buyers a sense of the whole package _ the person, the spirit of the work, and its history, he said. "It’s one of the few art fairs that really runs the gamut, because we have things for a dollar and two dollars all the way to $5,000."

    The market will be held on Museum Hill, where the folk art museum is located, just a few miles from downtown. It will be followed by two venerable summer markets on the Sante Fe Plaza: The 56th annual Traditional Spanish Market will be held July 28-29, with 250 artists showing handcrafted traditional arts such as religious carvings, tinwork and the regional embroidery called colcha; Indian Market, scheduled Aug. 17-19, attracts tens of thousands of art enthusiasts and visitors who browse the work of some 1,200 artists from 100 tribes.

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