If you are still looking for a holiday gift for family/friends, swing by the Penn State Brandywine Bookstore (hours and location) and grab some Alta Gracia t-shirts! If you can’t get to the bookstore, you can also order online.
We just finished our second Alta Gracia t-shirt swap on campus, swapping gently used t-shirts for brand-new special-ordered Penn State Brandywine Alta Gracia shirts! All collected and donated shirts are being donated to Planet Aid, a nonprofit organization that collects and recycles used clothing to protect the environment and support global sustainable development.
We are still swapping out some last-minute t-shirts, but we have given out at least 70 Alta Gracia shirts and collected over 120 to donate to Planet Aid!
For those of you that follow our website, you may recall reading about our first t-shirt swap and our recommendations for how to host a t-shirt swap. Instead of repeating that same information, we are going to add a few updates in this blog post.
If you would like to see more photos from our event, please visit our Flickr site.
Below, some of the shirts on their way to Planet Aid!
Happy Fair Trade Month everyone! We’re pleased to be able to participate in the 9th annual Fair Trade month. This is the first time Penn State Brandywine is joining the national voice during October in making ethical purchases to provide a “hand up, not a hand out” for workers across the globe. Fair Trade USA has some helpful hints with 10 Easy Ways to Celebrate Fair Trade Month, and we have found our own ways to get involved appropriate for our campus community.
First up – we are Going Bananas for Fair Trade! We are joining the Fair Trade Towns & Universities campaign with what we are sure is going to be a fun event on campus. We’ll have 400 bananas to give out to 400 people to consume, along with an information table to educate people about where to purchase Fair Trade bananas locally, learn about Fair Trade labels on products, and even take a banana quiz on iPads! If you are in the area, feel free to swing by our campus (Penn State Brandywine) between 10AM and 1PM on October 9 and 10, and look for us at the Lion Shrine in the middle of campus. We are going to be environmentally responsible with the 400 banana peels – we will be composting all those peels on campus! Look for photos during our event on our social media sites.
Next up in Fair Trade Month – our second Fair Trade t-shirt exchange! This event was so popular in the spring semester, we are back asking for slightly worn t-shirts to be swapped for a Penn State Brandywine Alta Gracia t-shirt (yes, these shirts will say Brandywine on them!). All collected t-shirts will be donated to Planet Aid. Stay tuned for dates and times of the event in late October.
At the end of the month, Dr. Laura Guertin and one of our original Fair Trade TrailBlazers, Sarah DeMartino (now at the Penn State University Park campus) will be attending the Fair Trade Campaigns Conference in Chicago. Look for them to bring back more innovative ideas for education/awareness/advocacy of Fair Trade!
Check out what is now available in our campus bookstore (and at the Barnes & Noble bookstores of all Penn State campuses) – Alta Gracia rolled t-shirts! The blue and gray t-shirts state on the label: “Living Tee, Changing Lives One Shirt At A Time. A Living Tee guarantees that the valued people making these t-shirts receive wages and benefits that allow them to provide for all of life’s necessities, for the health and well being of themselves and their family. Proudly made in the Dominican Republic, a Product of Alta Gracia.”
Contributed by Dr. Laura Guertin
The Penn State Brandywine first Fair Trade T-Shirt Exchange was a huge success. We exchanged 72 t-shirts and received 237 and counting in return! This t-shirt swap could not have been done without all the excellent students in our class, our hard working teacher, and all the staff and faculty around campus.
The Penn State Fair Trade t-shirts were purchased from Alta Gracia, which is a fair trade company located in the Dominican Republic, with a grant from the Student Allocations Fee Committee. All the students in the class and our professor Dr. G did a wonderful job preparing for our t-shirt swap. We put together brochures, a list of our URLs for our social networks, and posters to promote Fair Trade and our t-shirt swap. For the swap the rules were simple. You could bring in any number of t-shirts as long as they were slightly used and wearable, and in exchange the swapper gets one Penn State Fair Trade t-shirt. The swap was held on Wednesday and Thursday of this past week and was held indoors and outdoors. On Wednesday our turnout was fairly small because most of the students and staff were not aware that the swap was going on, despite the flyers and emails. A lot of students were excited about the swap when they saw it and told us that they would be back on Thursday with a t-shirt. On Thursday the swap skyrocketed through the roof in popularity. Students and staff did a great job of contributing.
This swap made our movement even more interesting then ever. We had fun with this swap but also did a great job of getting the word out to the students and staff. On behalf of our ENVST400W class we would like to thank everyone that made this possible and we would also like to throw a special thank you to Alta Gracia and Joe Buskirk from our Penn State Brandywine bookstore, donating 37 t-shirts from the bookstore himself, for making this swap a huge success.
Contributed by Joe Sweeny
The Fair Trade t-shirt exchange at Penn State Brandywine was a huge success! During our journey toward becoming a Fair Trade University, we have worked toward raising awareness of the Fair Trade movement and our efforts on campus. As part of the process, we’ve committed to hosting several Fair Trade events on campus each semester. Our first big event was hosting Amanda White from Divine Chocolate (read more about it here), and our second event was Wednesday and Thursday’s Fair Trade T-shirt exchange. We hope that our experience can help other campuses learn how to best host a Fair Trade T-shirt Swap!
Aimee Ralph, showing some Penn State pride! (photo via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)
Our t-shirt swap was a two-day event where students could bring in a gently used t-shirt to exchange for a brand new, Fair Trade, Penn State t-shirt from Alta Gracia Apparel. Our 72 Fair Trade tees quickly disappeared, and we received 237 tees for charity in exchange! All of the donated tees were given to local Planet Aid drop boxes. We chose Planet Aid because we felt that their mission of global sustainability and recycling clothing complements the missions of the Fair Trade movement.
Here are a few of the important lessons we learned about hosting a t-shirt swap:
Joe gives a Fair Trade tee to Director of Student Affairs, Dr. Matthew Shupp, while Sarah gets footage of the TrailBlazers in action (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)
Bryan and Sara, packing up the donated tees… all 237 of them! (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)
Sara talks to Matthew Bodek, Instructional Design Specialist on campus (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)
The whole lot! Thanks PSU Brandywine, for your support! (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)
With a campus of about 1600 students, we were able to give away 72 t-shirts without a problem. For campuses with a larger student body, make sure you order enough tees! This is an event that will definitely bring success to your movement on campus.
Contributed by Sara Neville.
Fair Trade Coffee by nyoin at flickr’s creative commons
So many organizations on college campuses find unity in wearing the same t-shirt, whether it’s for a sports team, a hobbies club, or a specific fundraiser. Students and faculty go through various types of t-shirt companies to design and purchase bulk orders of tees, but most of these companies do not stand for anything. HAE Now, an organic and Fair Trade t-shirt company, stands for environmental and social sustainability. HAE Now has partnered with Fair Trade USA, committing not only to protect the environment through their organic practices, but to care for farmers and their families as well.
Any organization on any campus has the opportunity to stand for something, too. By using companies like HAE Now to provide tees for their events, clubs and groups on college campuses have the ability to make change in the lives of those in impoverished areas. As Fair Trade USA says, “Every purchase counts.”
Read more at Fair Trade USA’s blog.
Like HAE Now on facebook!
Contributed by Sara Neville