Come to Boston and Share Your Views...about Fair Trade

The news these days is full of analysis about the discontent of the people of Massachusetts. Domestic politics aside, that great state will also be the scene of international debate and dialogue regarding challenges and celebrations in the Fair Trade movement. The Fair Trade Futures conference will be held September 10-12, 2010, and NOW is the time for you to submit ideas for conference workshops, town halls, seminars and so forth.

To make sure the conference--which I am helping lead as a representative of Catholic Relief Services Fair Trade--is a success, consumers and advocates will need to lend your voices. Do you have a unique experience with Fair Trade that you want to share? Are you concerned about some of the weaknesses, or even myths, in the movement and you want to pull back the curtain? Are you excited by the possibilities of the movement and want to deepen your commitment? To create a professional, lively, fun, inclusive, and practical atmosphere, the conference needs to address just these types of queries and we need a broad and new set of voices.

The deadline for proposals is February 10. For a set of guidelines, please contact Rachel Bradburd whose email is conference "at" fairtradefederation.org. Or give her a call at (202) 636-3547.

All sessions are expected to range between 60-90 minutes in length and be engaging and interactive. While only very limited funding is available to offset travel expenses, some scholarships will be offered to support the attendance of registered students and producers. If chosen to present, presenters will receive a complimentary registration for the event.

Speaking of registration, even if you don't want to present, please plan to attend! Early bird registration discounts end March 31. I look forward to seeing you there.

Haiti Relief Recommendations

As we emerge from the shock of Haiti's latest tragedy and try to find ways to be helpful in the midst of heart breaking devastatip, people are asking me for recommendations of relief organizations to support. I know some of the people working on the ground in Haiti for Catholic Relief Services. I can assure you that not only has our immediate reaction been full force but that we will also remain committed to Haiti as it goes through a long period of recovery. Call 1-877-HELP-CRS
To send a check:
Catholic Relief Services
P.O. Box 17090
Baltimore, MD 21203-7090
Memo portion of check: Haiti Earthquake

I am also a long-time fan of Oxfam.

Thank you for wanting to help. It is pretty obvious that in times of tremendous emergency, "conscious consumerism" is not want artisans and farmers immediately need. Once the people of Haiti start to recover, supporting through social enterprise will be an important next step. For now, let's try to give what we can.

Trading in my dryer sheets in 2010

Yesterday a colleague irked me a bit. We were picking our way through a snowy sidewalk, after departing a commuter train between Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland. I was trying to convince him to join a carpool with me in 2010. After four years of 90 minute commutes (in one direction) and to celebrate my new home, I am trying to find a way to drive to work that is environmentally friendly. From my time in a simplicity group and by rubbing shoulders with the green crowd in the Fair Trade movement, I am acutely aware that car driving is a particularly bad habit to get into.

Alas, I am not such a good recruiter, and it looks like come January I will be a lone driver. I told my colleague that I plan to stop drying my clothes as one big move to offset my carbon emissions. The popular home appliance actually turns out to be quite an energy sucker. My colleague laughed out loud. Not a belly laugh but a punchy "HA!," followed up with a comment something along the lines of "trying to rationalize your way onto the beltway, eh?"

It seemed like a mini version of the what might have been the tensions behind two weeks of the Copenhagen struggles. Two people agree that driving 70 miles round trip is a bad thing (or 193 countries agreed that climate change is a reality). But how to confront it was open to much debate (reduce output, switch technologies) and a bit of finger pointing (your country goes first with goals and commitments!). By the time we reached our office lobby a shrugged resignation: you do your thing, I do mine. (See you in Spain this summer!)

My in-box is filled with "Last Minute Fair Trade Shopping" advertisements, and I know that some of you are still scurrying around trying to find fair, green, and simple gifts. Occasionally you are going to yield to time pressure and pop into a department store. Or you are going to let your hand go toward an irresistible bargain on the shelf from uncertain locations during tight times. I join you in these less-than-perfect compromises. I feel like I am in good company and I look forward to more learning and decision making in the new year.

(The photo above is of my sister, mom, and me last Christmas.)

Join the Party: Fair Trade White House Gift Guide

I don't want to give too much away to loved ones, but as I undertake holiday shopping today my best source is the Fair Trade White House holiday gift guide.

I've blogged before about the nonpartisan, grassroots invitation to Mrs. Obama that she make the White House a Fair Trade Home. Most of the businesses involved have put together a guide of some of their most popular products to help the First Family and you shop fairly. Using fun software, you can even flip the pages of guide virtually (this is way beyond scrolling through a boring PDF). Think of it as a paperless green effort too.

Good luck with your shopping (modest and conscious though we want it to be!) and don't forget to sign the petition and join the Facebook fan page to encourage Mrs. Obama to bring the justice of Fair Trade into her home. Maybe she'll make it a New Year's Resolution?

The Focus of Holiday Shopping

For the past few months I've been honored to be a lead blogger for the Fair Trade Resource Network. Here's a slightly modified last entry for them, with a big thank you to readers of this blog too!

Part of my daily routine is to read from inspirational sources. Currently I am revisiting Simple Abundance, a daybook I received as a gift about a decade ago. A recent reflection included,

“At this time of year our conscious attention often turns to what we don’t have rather than what we do—and for a very good reason. The season of non-stop shopping has arrived. [After Thanksgiving] the race to get ready for the next round of holidays begins. No sooner have we celebrated the season of plenty then, with the advent of the first official days of [holiday] shopping, we enter…frenetic weeks of looking, finding, buying, and ordering—but not for ourselves. We feel overwhelmed by a season of lack….

Before we head to the mall, it would do our souls good to have a reality check, in the form, not only of counting our blessings, but of focusing on them. Money is going to have to buy a lot in the next few weeks, but it can’t buy the gifts that count the most: good health, a loving and supportive [relationship], healthy [children and loved ones], the fulfillment of creative expression, and inner peace. We forget this, not because we’re ungrateful louts, but because we get distracted by the razzamatazz of real life. Now is the time to remember….”
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

The “razzamatazz” of this year makes me eager for the holidays to fly by so 2010 can get here. The illnesses of elderly relatives, the purchase of a new home and the resulting shift from an urban to suburban lifestyle, a global economic crisis impacting my day job and the Fair Trade movement I love—all are my own special type of 2009 distractions and reasons for dread as I look at my holiday list and check it twice.

Yet this week, I have received cheerful greetings from a friend with the World Food Program who narrowly escaped a kidnapping in Pakistan. Another friend in Sudan wryly reported that his humanitarian service includes sleeping in tool sheds and having only a towel to provide warmth in the cool night air.

Definitely this is the time to count my blessings and to recommit myself to a season of more than just making it through the shopping process. I’ll start by offering a word of thanks to you the reader-as-shopper.

If you are visiting this site, you are probably already doing your best to make plenty of Fair Trade holiday purchases. You are building a just marketplace gift by gift. You’ll likely offer educational pointers on economic justice to relatives and friends while they unwrap your offerings. You do so because you recall that across the world there are many who can hardly remember good health, love, companionship, freedom, peace. You are taking small actions in a big, complex world to alter that reality for others.

Fair Traders like you make holiday shopping worth a lot of focus. Thanks for motivating me.

Fair Trade month keeps going in Maryland and Pennsylvania

If you are in Maryland or Pennsylvania, it may not feel like Fair Trade month is over! That's because on November 6th and 7th the Hyattsville Mennonite Church is having their annual Ten Thousand Villages Craft Fair and Bake Sale. As I suggest in my book, the Fair Trade movement was started by Mennonite Edna Ruth Byler, and it is good to see the religion's commitment to the cause continuing. For details on time and address in Hyattsville, MD visit the community's website.

I will be doing my own faith-based event as the guest of Chestnut Hill Friends (Quaker) Meeting near Philadelphia. All are welcome to the discussion, Sunday, November 8 at noon. I will explain what Fair Trade is, how it is making a positive impact on lives of people around the world, and why and how Quakers and others of goodwill can support its continued growth.

Take Steps to be Mrs. Obama's Role Model

It was a personal treat for me to be at Busboys & Poets, a Washington, DC institution, this week talking about the Fair Trade White House effort. The event was organized by Global Exchange in order to celebrate Fair Trade month, and the evening featured The Fair Trade, a documentary describing the incredibly personal genesis of body care Fair Trade company, Anti-Body. Anti-Body is one of 100+ businesses, individuals and organizations working on the grassroots, nonpartisan invitation to Mrs. Obama to declare the White House a Fair Trade Home.

Please sign the on-line invitation!

What was confirmed for me at this event was my growing understanding of the impetus for the effort: it isn't about the Obama family. It is about average American families.

I first became involved in the effort this past spring after Mrs. Obama unveiled her organic garden, when Fair Traders were considering how the First Family might also express support for the ethics of Fair Trade, which include environmental sustainability and small-scale agriculture. Fair trading at the White House was already an idea conceived by a DC advocate in anticipation of the inauguration. To me, having Mrs. Obama involved seemed like a great awareness building and education opportunity. Some of us even envisioned the creation of dozen of Fair Trade gift bags of food, clothing and body care products that the White House could route to Washington, DC homeless shelters.

The more I talk with folks about Mrs. Obama having Fair Trade products in her family's home, the more I realize that Fair Traders are serving as incredible examples for the First Family. We are sharing how we live our lives, how our consumer choices are shaped by concern for fair wages, fair working conditions, and fair treatment of the planet. One gentleman at the Busboy's event shared with me that he works for the Defense Department but that he tries to shop his values to help create a society that relies less on force for conflict resolution. I mingled a bit with business managers who want to live the American dream but in ways that don't exploit others. Once again I found examples of ordinary people using Fair Trade to create extraordinary progress for the world.

Yes, of course, it is the nature of our society that many of us look up to the Obamas for guidance on everything from volunteering our time to charming Jay Leno. But with the Fair Trade White House efforts we have a real opportunity to demonstrate to the First Family how we Fair Traders live our lives. We can be role models demonstrating that important individual actions can be a positive for consumers and producers, especially those struggling in poverty around the world and around the corner. I still hope Mrs. Obama accepts our invitation to declare the White House a Fair Trade home so that our coalition can celebrate publicly and create a great media and education moment. But I also hope we get Mrs. Obama's private attention to help her understand who Fair Traders are and why we'd welcome her to join our movement.