Fair Trade Expo

~Last Saturday, I helped out at a Fair Trade Expo held at the Carrboro Century Center. The event was part of "The Big Read", a program run by the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Central Piedmont Literacy Collaborative. The idea of this region's Big Read is to get as many people as possible to read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, so people will better understand what migrant farm laborers (of which there are many in North Carolina) go through in difficult economic times.

The expo was being run by the staff of the Carrboro Cybrary, and since I work nearby at the Carrboro Branch Library, I decided to help out.

^ The information table of the Fair Trade Expo. Learn all about Fair Trade!

Fair Trade is a market-based social program designed to empower producers in developing countries and ensure sustainability, typically for agricultural trade items such as coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, etc. To be certified as "Fair Trade", a product must reach certain standards of ethical production, ensuring that the producers are paid a fair wage, have good working conditions, and have a stake in the business (for a much better explanation, look at the Fair Trade Overview at fairtradeusa.org).

This might sound hopelessly idealistic, but it's a market-based business approach (like micro-lending), not a pie-in-the-sky hippie scheme. The amount of Fair Trade products produced and sold is increasing rapidly, and it has helped millions in developing countries achieve not only better standards of living, but a sustainable business model that will continue to produce income for them. On the buyers side, we get the benefit of high-quality, pesticide-free products, and an increased market for U.S. exports as consumers in developing nations are able to buy more.

^ Representatives from the Open Eye Cafe were at the Expo, selling delicious, freshly-brewed fair trade coffee. Or at least, it smelled delicious; I haven't drank coffee since I got back from Japan.

^ My job at the expo was to run a quiz about fair trade; the display on my left has facts about fair trade that help with the quiz.

^ Good luck, girls! 5 out of 8 correct answers won the quiz-taker a prize (a magnet, button, or sticker). The rare person who got them all correct (and believe me, it wasn't easy!) won a fair-trade chocolate bar.

^ This dad got a little help from his backseat driver.

^ There was also a representative from Ten Thousands Villages, a chain of shops that sell fair trade handicrafts such as ornaments and toys.

^ This guy from Weaver Street Market had plenty of fair trade items for sale, including coffee, tea, cooking cocoa, and chocolate bars. He also had free chocolate samples...

^ Another game at the expo was this "Pin the Fair Trade Food on the Country", along with information on which countries the products come from.

We ended up with perhaps thirty people stopping by the expo. It wasn't a tremendous turnout, as I don't think it was advertised enough. There was a reporter from the Chapel Hill Herald who interviewed me and wrote an article about the expo for the paper. Still, I'm glad that a few dozen people got a chance to learn what the "Fair Trade" label means, so they'll understand when they see it in stores. Hopefully, if given a choice, they'll buy fair trade.