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Green, fair trade gifts grow more popular this holiday season December 8, 2008 -
Chicago Tribune
Forget slashing prices. What picky shoppers want this holiday season are gifts with meaning. So merchants are scouting for items that are environmentally or socially responsible, whether that means produced locally, often with recycled material, or made in accordance with fair trade standards, which require that workers are paid a living wage in safe conditions. El Cerrito man helps coffee farmers blossom December 1, 2008 -
San Francisco Chronicle
El Cerrito resident Paul Rice stands at the edge of a dirt road, overlooking the volcanic peaks and adobe homes of this small Nicaraguan town near the border with Honduras. “Twenty years ago, on this road - at this time of day, at this time of year - I would be worrying right now. You wouldn’t want to be here,” Rice said. Rice arrived in Nicaragua in 1983 at a time when the U.S.-sponsored Contra war (1981-1988) was raging against the leftist government of the National Sandinista Liberation Front. A 23-year-old college graduate, he came to study land reform and cooperative organizations in the northern city of Chinandega. (more…) UN calls food summit in 2009, hopes for fair trade December 1, 2008 -
Reuters South Africa
The world should hold a food summit in the first half of next year to seek fairer trade and help farmers in poor countries make a decent living, the head of the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday. Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said the summit would seek to reform trade, encourage greater food production in developing countries and ensure funding for infrastructure and agricultural productivity. “I have just put the idea (of holding a food summit) to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in my message of congratulations,” he told the body’s governing conference. (more…) When Chocolate Is a Way of Life November 5, 2008 -
New York Times
ON an island in the Napo River in Ecuador’s Amazonian rain forest, in a tin-roofed hut on stilts, live some of the world’s most unusual entrepreneurs. César and Magdalena Dahua grow cacao, along with pineapples, vanilla, avocados, cassava, coffee, oranges and plantains. As they hack off the football-shaped fruit of the cacao trees, their three youngest daughters run barefoot nearby. The girls stop to suck the sticky white pulp that envelops the cacao beans in the pods. It tastes like Sour Patch candies. (more…) Churches push fair-trade chocolates for Halloween November 3, 2008 -
USA Today
Halloween’s a time for pumpkins, costumes, and — if some faith-based groups have their way this year — global market awareness.
Faith organizations and congregations around the country are promoting fair-trade chocolate for trick-or-treaters to raise consciousness about conditions and prices for cocoa farmers around the world. “This is an example of how everybody has the ability to make some change,” said Susan Burton, who works for the the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society in Washington. (more…) Peas, Coldplay delivers music with a message July 21, 2008 -
 Coldplay is campaigning for famine relief and fair trade practices at its concert tour stops.
FOR YEARS musicians have taken a leading role in one of their industry’s most important acts of public service — turning people’s hunger for a great song, well performed, into food that feeds the physical hunger of thousands. (more…)
Is Fair Trade Becoming ‘Fair Trade Lite’? June 18, 2008 -
Business Week
Some proponents say the adjustments needed to bring companies like Wal-Mart and P&G aboard warp the goal of helping small farmers. When TransFair CEO Paul Rice sits across from Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, the differences in their backgrounds couldn’t be more stark. Scott has spent nearly his entire adult life working at the retail behemoth, with a mandate to increase sales and profits and keep costs as low as possible. Rice, after graduating from Yale University in 1983, spent 11 years working with peasant coffee farmers in Nicaragua trying to squeeze higher prices out of coffee buyers. He set up one of the first cooperatives, with 24 coffee-growing families, who sold their first batch of fair trade product to Europe in 1990 for $1.26 a pound, compared with the 10¢ a pound coffee was selling for in Nicaragua then. “It was an overnight legend in Nicaragua,” recalls Rice. (more…) Church Groups Espouse Fair Trade June 18, 2008 -
Business Week
Religious organizations are spreading the fair trade gospel to their congregations, and even investing in some like-minded enterprises. Under the carved wooden arches and the soft glow of the gothic St. John’s Lutheran Church in downtown Des Moines, Pastor Rachel Mithelman delivers sermons to about 500 worshipers every weekend on how to live better lives as Christians. She also tells them to buy fair trade coffee and chocolate so that poor farmers around the world are paid a reasonable price for the goods they produce. “We live our lives unjustly in so many avenues, but fair trade is one way to ensure justice, and there is no reason to buy cheap coffee on the backs of poor farmers,” says Mithelman. To back up her point, she serves fair trade coffee during the church’s fellowship hour. And fair trade chocolate is on sale through a baker’s rack display. (more…) Video: Activists across North America Set World Record June 12, 2008 -
World Fair Trade Day in North America. 12,158 people. 150 events. One video. Watch this short video and see the action with your own eyes! Michael Conroy on Activist Campaigns and the Certification Revolution June 2, 2008 -
Social Funds
SocialFunds writer Bill Baue speaks with Michael Conroy about his new book, Branded! How the “Certification Revolution” is Transforming Global Companies SocialFunds.com — Certification—-it sounds boring and wonky. But in his new book Branded! How the “Certification Revolution” is Transforming Global Companies, Michael Conroy tells an exciting story of activists campaigning against companies–and companies responding! The two sides moved from antagonism to tense collaboration in the creation of certification schemes that solved activist concerns while preserving–and often boosting–companies’ profitability. (more…) |
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