Category Archives: Fair Trade news

#FairTuesday – November 27, 2012

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If Black Friday wasn’t your thing, and you have already supported Small Business Saturday, we encourage you to breeze right through Cyber Monday to #FairTuesday!  Launched by the New York-based nonprofit Global Good Partners, “the goal of #FairTuesday is to inspire conscious consumerism and show how an everyday purchase can change lives in a whole community.”  So spread the word, and shop Fair Trade this holiday season (and year-round)!

So where can your purchase your Fair Trade items?  Check the online listing of supporting retailers of Fair Trade and the listing of Fair Trade Federation shops.

 

 

Hershey Announces 100% Certification by 2020!

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That’s right you read correctly, Hershey has announced that they plan to be 100% Fair Trade certified by the year 2020, and that by next year they should have one of their top name brands certified. For years the Raise The Bar, Hershey! campaign has been actively pressuring the chocolate company to reevaluate their child slavery practices and work towards a more ethical system.

Hershey stated that they will make this change in small increments over the next eight years, but did not address how they will do this or what certifications they seek to gain.While there is still a lot to question about Hershey’s statement, this is definitley a victory for Raise The Bar, Hershey!

Read the article here http://www.raisethebarhershey.org/raise-the-bar-hershey-campaign-welcomes-hershey%E2%80%99s-announcement-to-source-100-certified-cocoa-by-2020/

Contributed by Louis Donaghue, Fair Trade Intern

 

Bandi Mbubi: Demand a fair trade cell phone

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Your mobile phone, computer and game console have a bloody past — tied to tantalum mining, which funds the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Drawing on his personal story, activist and refugee Bandi Mbubi gives a stirring call to action. (Filmed at TEDxExeter, LINK to this TEDx Talk).

You can also visit the website of Bandi’s organization, Congo Calling, to learn more.
[ted id=1567]

Whole Foods Supports Child Slavery?

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Most people that follow the Fair Trade movement know that Hershey’s chocolate  has been accused of using child slave labor for a long time now. Many petitions have been aimed towards trying to change this. Recently Hershey’s has made  a new brand of chocolate, trying to appeal towards their ethically minded buyers, that wears the Rainforest Alliance symbol called Dagoba. Many thought that Hershey’s was taking a step in the right direction, until it was discovered that even this more ethical version of their chocolate bar, along with another Hershey’s side brand named Scharffenberger, was using child slave labor.

As a response many markets and buyers of Dagoba and Scharffenberger boycotted the products and have signed petitions trying to change this. When Whole Foods was offered a spot on the list to petition Hershey’s crimes many were shocked when they withheld their support. Whole Foods is a large advocate for the Fair Trade movement, even having their certification labels call Whole Trade. Fair Trade fans are now asking where Whole Foods loyalties lie, with ethically minded consumers and poorly treated workers around the world, or big companies who use slave labor?

No one can disregard everything Whole Foods has done so far to benefit Fair Trade, but it makes one wonder if they honestly believe in these ethical practices, or if they see them as a convenient vehicle for more sales.

Voice your opinion here.

http://action.laborrights.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4855

–Contributed by Louis Donaghue, Fair Trade Intern

2012 Fairly Educated Conference Proposes Fair Trade for All Colleges

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Hello everyone! My name is Louie Donaghue, Penn State Brandywine’s Fair Trade Intern for the fall semester. I am a Letters, Arts & Science (LAS) major in my senior year with a minor in Environmental Inquiry. I will be regularly updating the blog posts and organizing events with Dr. Guertin. I want to thank Sarah DeMartino for starting off the Fair Trade Intern program so well and I am excited to pick up where she left off.

My first blog post is going to focus on an outcome from the 2012 Fairly Educated Conference held in Australia. At the conference, Fairly Educated announced the start of a new campaign to have every college campus in Australia and New Zealand reach Fair Trade status by the end of 2015. The first step in the Fairly Educated plan was to launch a petition asking Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability and the Tertiary Access Group, the two most influential education groups in the area, to give them full support in their mission. Here is a link to the petition http://www.change.org/everyuni.

Is Fairly Educated’s plan possible or too ambitious? I think that Fairly Educated’s plan is very ambitious and improbable, but it’s exactly what the Fair Trade movement needs right now. One of the bigger challenges that Fair Trade faces is that not enough people support it. Even if Fairly Educated fails to reach their goal and they only get half of the campuses on board, this campaign will still be a success.

If Fairly Educated does succeed would that mean something like this would be possible in America? Maybe one day, but definitely not in the next three years.

http://www.change.org/everyuni

http://fairlyeducated.com/mediarelease

–Contributed by Louis Donaghue, Fair Trade Intern

 

Bruce Crowther: Fair Trade Way

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Between Friday 24 and Wednesday 29 August, four Garstang Oxfam Group members and original pioneers of The Fair Trade Way will walk the route again to promote fair trade and trade justice and raise money for Oxfam and The FIG Tree in Garstang. They will be accompanied by dedicated Oxfam campaigner Push Krishnamurthy and take part in storytelling events along the way.

In this video, Bruce Crowther, founder of the Fairtrade Town movement and instrumental in establishing Garstang, UK, as the world’s first Fair Trade town, talks about walking the Fair Trade Way.

Follow the journey and find out more: www.oxfam.org.uk/fairtradeway
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4MOnrjt_E8?rel=0]

 

A Call for your Support from Fairly Educated!

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I recently received an email from United Students for Fair Trade, asking for me to support Fairly Educated’s effort to make every university in Australia and New Zealand a Fair Trade University by the end of 2015. We are asking for your support as well and encourage you to sign their petition on Change.Org. This petition seeks the support from “…the two most influential organizations in the tertiary education sector”, the Tertiary Access Group (TAG) and Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS), in passing resolutions agreeing to help their members become Fair Trade. It is an important effort to support as the global impact on farmers and workers would be incredible! Please share it and sign.

–Contributed by Sarah DeMartino, Fair Trade Intern

Book Review: Global Girlfriends

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From time to time, our students will be prepare book reviews of Fair Trade books and books on other related topics.  Here, Fair Trade TrailBlazer Sara Neville shares her thoughts about Global Girlfriends.

Edgar, Stacey. (2011). Global Girlfriends: How One Mom Made It Her Business to Help Women in Poverty Worldwide. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 290 pages. ISBN: 978-0-312-62173-5.

Stacey Edgar’s book, Global Girlfriends, is a testament to the power of determination and networking. After discovering her passion for helping others, Edgar worked as a social worker for years until she realized how unfulfilling it was. She hoped to help those who suffered intense injustices in our world. She hoped to reach out to the women in our world who are treated so unfairly, so she decided to start her own business. With little more than some research about fair trade under her belt, Edgar invested a tax refund into a business involving the import of goods from global artisan groups run by women. She hoped to change the lives of these women, and over the past eight years, her business has expanded, bringing hope and prosperity to the lives of women worldwide.

Edgar’s book chronicles her journey from Peace Corps reject to panic-stricken mother to business-savvy “global girlfriend.” Her goal was to buy products from women in areas afflicted by political unrest, poverty, the horrors of the sex trade, illiteracy, HIV/AIDS, and gender inequality. By buying products from these hard-working women, she hoped to begin to eradicate the feminization of poverty worldwide. Fair trade allows farmers, artisans, and other workers worldwide the fair chance at life. Rather than being exploited by large companies, the fair trade movement works with small co-ops and farms, allowing workers to receive fair wages which help them live more fruitful, prosperous lives.

Edgar did not know much about how to start a business. Her passion for poverty-stricken areas of our world led her to research the fair trade movement. She connected with women’s groups online, and brainstormed with her friends and family who shared the same interest in helping women worldwide. She looked to successful organizations like Women for Women International, and allowed guidelines created by UNICEF and the World Health Foundation to lead her in the right direction when choosing areas to work. Edgar teamed up with her neighbor, Mary-Mike, who had studied business and could help her with spreadsheets, finances, and importing and exporting goods from global women’s groups.

Global Girlfriends reads like an email from a close friend. Edgar effectively tells her story through personal interactions with women in countries like India and Nepal. She shares her fears and successes, her hesitations and greatest ideas. Though the book is not a piece of stellar writing, Edgar was able to illustrate exactly what she aimed for: the poverty that breaks down so many people in our world today, the struggles she faced as a privileged American consumer, and the courage it took to step forward and decide to make change in today’s world.

Personally, I believe the only qualifications a person has to have to make social change are passion, perseverance, and an ounce of business savvy. Stacey Edgar was more than qualified to start this business, and has inspired others by her efforts. I see social change tricky to navigate. Many people believe it is hard to do, but Edgar’s story proves that all you need is to believe in yourself and push through the difficulties and frustrations that social problems in the world are fraught with.  Overall, I was extremely satisfied with Edgar’s story. I love how personal it was, and how the act of simple storytelling so intensely inspired me to want to make a difference in my world. The fair trade movement is something I have grown to become very passionate about, and the fact that it has the potential to positively impact the lives of so many women worldwide is what makes it even more worthwhile to me. I am desperately excited to jump into the real world and find the perfect connection to a group like Global Girlfriends, Camfed (Campaign for Female Education), Indre-et-Loire (an artisan group for women living in poverty in France), charity: water, water.org, Girl’s Friend Nepal (a group inspired by Global Girlfriends) or any number of organizations that aim to eradicate poverty and create better lives for people living in stark, desperate conditions. Edgar’s story has inspired me by illustrating the power of networking, the importance of perseverance, and the strength of women in our world today.

-Review prepared by Sara Neville, Penn State Brandywine

Fair Trade Podcast: Fair Trade Resources for Staying Educated

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Link to podcast (MP3 file)

Script:

The Penn State Brandywine Fair Trade TrailBlazers have a few helpful tips on staying in the loop with information about the Fair Trade movement. Penn State Brandywine recently became declared a Fair Trade University, and it was very important for us TrailBlazers to understand the growing movement and educate our campus. There is a lot going on with Fair Trade, and we had some hesitations and reservations about how to proceed in deciding what was best for our campus. Here are some tools we felt were helpful for learning about Fair Trade as the movement changes.

Starting out, we didn’t know much about Fair Trade, so our first step was to read! We read lots of articles about Fair Trade to acquire the necessary background information, and here are a few good websites and books for you to check out. We found the Fair Trade Resource Network’s website (fairtraderesource.org) very helpful and up to date with everything happening in the Fair Trade world, along with Fair Trade.org.uk, and the Fair Trade section under the Environment category of The Guardian website (guardiannews.com). We also found the books Fighting The Banana Wars and other Fairtrade Battles by Harriet Lamb, Fair Trade by Jacqueline DeCarlo, Global Girlfriends: How One Mom Made It Her Business to Help Women in Poverty Worldwide by Stacey Edgar, Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival by Daniel Jaffee, and Coffee and Community by Sarah Lyon to be very helpful in understanding Fair Trade.

Our second step was to contact different organizations involved with Fair Trade. There is a lot of different activity and viewpoints toward Fair Trade at the moment, so talking to a wide variety of organizations helped us greatly in trying to understand the whole picture.  Everybody we spoke to was helpful, enthusiastic, and had a wealth of knowledge and insight. A few good groups to contact are United Students for Fair Trade, Divine Chocolate, Fair Trade Towns, Fair Trade USA, Equal Exchange, Fair Trade Federation, Alta Gracia, and Ten Thousand Villages. There is a plethora of other groups you can get in contact with, and we encourage you to do so!  Don’t forget that if you cannot bring a speaker to campus, there is always the opportunity to Skype and exchange information via email.

We also made a point of contacting local Fair Trade towns and schools. Support is crucial when starting out on the Fair Trade path, and we are lucky enough to be located in the town of Media, Pennsylvania, America’s first Fair Trade Town, and to have Penncrest High School, America’s first Fair Trade public high school, right down the road.  We were also able to talk to Temple University about Fair Trade and what it is doing to support and bring Fair Trade to its campus. Having other groups to talk to helped us to see what has already been done and where we could go. These institutions were both insightful and encouraging! If you and your university are seeking to support Fair Trade, ask other schools and towns in your area what they are doing to support Fair Trade and start networking early.  Even if they are not designated to be a Fair Trade school or town, they still might have initiatives supporting Fair Trade. 

Lastly, perhaps one of the most powerful messages we took away from our discussions with these organizations, schools, and towns, was to ask questions and hold people accountable. It is important to understand how Fair Trade is growing and to ask the right questions. Know what Fair Trade means to you and don’t be afraid to ask difficult questions. If something is unclear, ask somebody about it and speak up.

We hope that you found our tips helpful. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at fairtrade@bw.psu.edu, or on our Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ accounts.