As the time demands from a new company I started several months ago were increasing, I found myself needing to sell my interest in Fair Trade Sports.

Starting January 1 you will see the FTS assets redirecting to an exciting new US-based organization, Senda Athletics, which has taken on our legacy of bringing you excellent Fair Trade soccer equipment that makes a difference. With Senda, you can expect the same high quality products and service that Fair Trade Sports has brought you the past five years. Please join them in changing the world through soccer!

My new company – CORA (the Tibetian word for circle) – is an exciting solution for your smart phone and browser that connects you and your stuff to a new life once you are ready to pass it on. The “zero waste” citizen-focused app connects to a B2B solution that seeks to eliminate the source of the plastic pollution problem on our beaches and waterways. Please stop by our blog for a visit sometime!

~ Scott James

(outgoing) President, Fair Trade Sports

This piece originally appeared at Forbes.

This month I spoke with Matt Bogoshian in DC. He is the Senior Policy Counsel for the Environmental Protection Agency. One of the ways I reconcile being apolitical and staying as far away from DC as possible is because I know I have kindred spirits like Matt fighting the good fight there. He works quite a bit with businesses, so I asked him about CSR this month.

Scott: Tell me about a company that is doing something in CSR that would be a model for the future.

Matt: Staples and Wegmans are two recent examples who, in a partnership with us, worked collaboratively with the thermal paper manufacturers to explain that a key to their business model is supplying products that people want to buy because they are safe and healthy. The retailers convinced these suppliers that thermal paper with bisphenol A (BPA) does not meet their needs as it is associated with adverse effects in the environment and may be problematic for people. Thanks to these business leaders, the EPA is now examining 19 alternatives to BPA with the active engagement of the full supply chain.

Scott: So Staples and Wegmans succeeded both financially and environmentally with that project.

Matt: Yes. I’d like to see a corporate model for the future that incorporates sustainability much more broadly and deeply than what some might consider CSR being capable of doing.  Model companies in the future will be ones that make more money than their competitors by producing products and services that directly or additionally address social and environmental needs.

Scott: Tell me about a specific CSR effort in another country you find inspiring, that could serve as a model for the US.

Matt: Our sustainability efforts with American manufacturers routinely afford us an opportunity to see the positive effects of corporate sustainability efforts both domestically and abroad. Take Steelcase Furniture in Grand Rapids, Michigan as an example. Under our Green Suppliers Network program – which is designed to improve manufacturing supply chains’ process efficiencies and environmental performance – we’ve seen their sustainability efforts result in $1MM+ annual savings for seven of their powder coating lines. Steelcase has now taken these lessons learned and is applying them to their operations in Germany, France, Mexico and China.

We also watch with interest the water conservation efforts of Coca Cola and other large corporations as they demonstrate sound corporate social responsibility for water conservation in India and other countries.

Scott: And how about the other way around? Is anyone internationally watching the US for CSR inspiration?

Matt: Yes, sometimes we learn from our friends abroad about efforts underway here in the US which inspire them, and give us extra energy to expand what we have already begun to do. Brazil, Chile and Singapore were excited to find out from us about one of our newer efforts called E3, which stands for Economy, Energy and the Environment. E3 draws together the resources of five U.S. federal agencies, the utility industry and local communities who then work together to help tune-up factories to reduce wasted time/motion/material/energy to help them become more profitable and sustainable at the same time.

Scott: Wow. That’s a lot of coordination! Tell me another example of what we are doing right here in the US.

Matt: Well, the EPA has a mark, a label called Design for the Environment (DfE). We evaluate products that have been reformulated to only contain safer chemicals and allows these products to display the label.

More than 500 companies with serious CSR leadership have reformulated more than 2,700 products to meet EPA’s stringent, science-based criteria so that their products can display the DfE label. They do this because they see a substantial return on their investment and the DfE label opens doors to new markets.

Scott: What new markets?

Matt: States and municipalities adopting green purchasing requirements, retailers who demand greener and safer products to enhance their sustainability profiles, and citizens who want products that are safer for their families and the environment. Companies large and small – from Colgate-Palmolive, Clorox, S.C. Johnson to Jelmar (CLR products), Phurity and Earth Friendly Products – are willing to invest heavily to earn the DfE label. DfE also fuels innovation among chemical manufacturers, such as BASF, Dow, and Akzo-Nobel, who have developed chemical ingredients to meet the stringent DfE criteria for use in DfE-labeled products. So in addition to gaining new market share, the DfE label helps companies meet independent sustainability measures like the Dow Jones Sustainability index.

Scott: OK, let’s talk about where we could improve. Could you illustrate one of our failures and what we can learn from it…where we are not succeeding as much as we could?

Matt: We have collectively failed to build genuine American consensus between citizens, businesses, governments, NGOs and others that ensures America will continue to be the leading economy and example for decades to come. The world is evolving from the agricultural, industrial and information ages toward the age of sustainability and we want to continue to lead in this new age. The good news is that useful lessons can be drawn from the many innovative sustainability efforts already underway by people and organizations throughout the nation.

Scott: In that vein, what question are we not asking ourselves that we should? And what would you imagine the results to be if we did ask ourselves that question?

Matt: We should be asking ourselves, “Is there a smarter, more sustainable way, to make and grow the things we need?” Sticking with the manufacturing sector as an example – with the possible exception of the electronics industry – many manufacturing processes have changed little over time. This may be due to unchanging manufacturing specifications, economic uncertainties or just plain human reluctance to change. Whatever the reason, these barriers are man-made and must be overcome.

If we answer that question with American ingenuity and innovation, we will see our manufacturing sector grow and lead our economy toward the kind of long term strength and prosperity we have come to enjoy for so many decades.

This month I spent time with serial entrepreneur Dal LaMagna to ask him about his new book, “Raising Eyebrows, A Failed Entrepreneur Finally Gets It Right.” He’s been called an irrepressible capitalist (among other things) which made for an interesting conversation.

Scott: In your book you suggest that you were more successful with your company than you would have been had you not followed principles of Corporate Social Responsibility.  Talk to me more about that.

Dal:  Building Tweezerman as a company that practices what I call “responsible capitalism” resulted in a team of competent, happy employees, loyal customers, satisfied vendors, and a community that supported the company as much as the company supported the community.

Scott: I see the positive upward cycle of that. How did that contribute to your success?

Dal: My definition of success is the quality of life the company provides for me and for my employees.  As the company grew my empowered employees – a critical element of CSR – took over, and my work became more strategic and less mundane. I didn’t have to sell, collect money, go to trade shows or worry about much except the strategic trajectory of the company. Had it been up to me alone I would never have grown Tweezerman to a 65,000-square-foot facility with 250 employees. When you run a business that takes care of its employees, its vendors, its customers, and its community…well, all these stakeholders then take care of you.

Scott: What were the salient CSR practices that you felt made the difference?

Dal:  Employees sharing in the profits made a significant difference; after a trial period every one of them became shareholders in the company. We promoted from within and hired from the community. When things went wrong we concentrated on solving the problem rather than pinning the blame. We provided health and job security. It took the agreement of at least two of the top three managers to fire someone which we did rarely.

Scott: And how about outside of the company?

Dal: We respected our vendor’s right to make a living and did not exploit them. For example when we were late paying bills we added interest to the payment (equal to what we would have paid our bank).  We gave back 5% of our profits to the communities we served. We had a lifetime guarantee for all our products and didn’t even charge shipping when we repaired or replaced them. Over the years we found that people cared more and more about the kind of company they were doing business with. Loyal customers, vendors, and workers made a big difference during those times over the 25 years especially when things got tough.

Scott: I’ve heard you say several times that you sold your company for much more money because it practiced responsible capitalism. Why?

Dal: The company that acquired Tweezerman paid more because our brand had a great reputation not only for quality but also for practicing CSR. We developed employees who were empowered people from the President down to the worker who cleaned the bathrooms.  We delivered a turnkey operation. The company that acquired us, J.A. Henckels, a division of Zwilling, only needed to send in two people, a CEO to replace me and a CFO to work with our existing CFO to match up reporting to the home office. Initially eight bidders were involved and through mutual eliminations we ended with the one whose policies of CSR most closely matched our own. We sold the company for about 14 times earnings and 1.5 times sales.

Scott: Would what you’ve done – establishing Tweezerman as a CSR company – work for any company?

Dal: Every company is different, but I believe that most companies can benefit from some CSR practices. Part of being a CSR company involves paying a living wage. I would think that a company that sells a commodity would have difficulty in paying this. I had the capability to pay my employees well, provide benefits, share profits, make charitable contributions, and more because I created a brand, which commanded a solid profit margin.

Scott: What about the international aspects of your company?

Dal: How your company treats the supply chain is a crucial aspect of CSR. We paid a living wage in India (of course much lower than what a living wage is in the U.S.) and operated our factory responsibly. We paid our China supplier more money so they could improve working conditions for their employees. If your business model is to exploit foreign labor you are not a CSR company. The marketplace is constantly punishing companies that have a product that can be easily replicated. If you are the kind of person who wants to get more out of your company than money, and strives to build a company that practices responsible capitalism, then avoid situations such as unreasonably tight profit margins that force you to exploit everyone and everything to make your company work.

You may not be aware of it, but you have amazing power to create change not only with your individual choices but in the decisions of your favorite universities.

Choosing Fair Trade coffee is only the first step. There are hundreds of Fair Trade products available to consumers—as well as to your local university or college—and purchasing them contributes to better livelihoods for the hardworking people in the developing world who produce them.

In addition to coffee, Fair Trade cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, fresh fruit, gifts, clothing, greeting cards, bags, sports balls, and much more are available to help schools around the United States go Fair Trade and take concrete action to support thousands of families in communities around the world.

Join us and take action today!

This month we have a tale of civil disobedience and the corporate response that touches nearly every household in North America.  It stretches from old growth forests of Canada to corporate boardrooms in Dallas. Oh, and a visit from Dr. Seuss’ Lorax. But first, my guest for this month’s interview, Dr. Michael Conroy.

In addition to being one of the go-to experts on product certification systems (his book on the topic stays in the short book stack on my desk for frequent reference), Dr. Conroy is a retired professor of economics, a board member of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and an established “big picture” thinker. One of my companies produces an FSC-certified product, which gave Michael and me an excuse to reconnect recently. I asked him about the CSR movement here in the States, as well as what he sees abroad.

Scott: You travel internationally way more than I do, Michael. Tell me about where we (the US-based CSR community) are succeeding in relation to the rest of the world.

Michael: I’ve got an interesting story for you that starts in 2004. Back then a group of advocacy NGOs – led by Greenpeace – began campaigning to get Kimberly-Clark to reduce its impacts on intact forests and old growth forests around the world by purchasing its fiber from eco-certified forests and/or recycled paper sources. Kimberly-Clark (KC) is arguably the largest purchaser of wood fiber for tissue products in the world; and it has some of the best established brands in the world, including Kleenex, Scott, Cottonelle, and more.

Scott: I know from time spent in Texas that they’re in Dallas and have sales of $15B+ [It was actually almost $20B for 2010 when I looked this up later, but what’s a billion or two between friends].

Michael: Greenpeace and company created a campaign called Kleercut to mimic the Kleenex brand.  Over the course of the campaign more than 50 activists were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience linked to KC.  The campaign focused on equating “Kleenex” with “Kleercut” and the forest damage created by the companies selling to KC.  They proceeded to drum up support across grocery stores and college campuses, and succeeded in media hits as big as CNN Money and Fortune Magazine.

Scott: Is this the Dr. Seuss thing?

Michael: Yes. You’ll remember that in The Lorax Dr. Seuss has trees speaking for the plight of the environment.  They rewrote the story to “personalize it” around KC and its suppliers, and then they acted it out, in costume, in front of the offices of KC board members!  It always drew a great local media response.

Scott: So did it work?

Michael: Yes, the campaign succeeded in bringing KC to the table and in August of 2009, KC and Greenpeace jointly announced new sourcing policies for KC fiber that included a goal of ensuring 100% of the fiber used in all its products was from environmentally responsible sources, with a clearly expressed preference for FSC fiber. It pledged by 2011 to increase its use of recycled and FSC-certified fiber in North American products to 40%, and by 2012 it would no longer use any pulp from Canada’s vast boreal forest (a principal source at that time) unless it was FSC certified.  By the end of 2010, well ahead of the target date, it had already reached 57% of its North American sourcing from FSC-certified or recycled fiber.

Scott: What implications and impact did that have on the rest of the industry, beyond the Canadian borders?

Michael: As a direct result of KC’s rewritten fiber sourcing policy, some of the largest forest products companies in the world are now actively seeking FSC certification of their supplies of wood chips and fiber.  This includes companies that had actively opposed FSC standards as too demanding and too costly to implement.

Both of the largest forest products companies in Chile (Arauco and CMPC/Mininco) which account for 80% of Chile’s forest products industry, are in the midst of the FSC assessment process, changing their practices to meet FSC standards, at a cost of millions of dollars in re-tooling and re-structuring their operations.  Both of those companies were co-founders of Chile’s competing forest products certification system, CertFor, and had resisted FSC certification for years.  But they had begun to find that markets placed little or no value on CertFor certification, whose standards were weaker and less demanding.

It has taken both Arauco and CMPC/Mininco more than a year to design and implement the changes needed to meet the standards.  And both companies, in private conversations, have told me that changes in purchasing policies of major companies like KC have made them realize that they needed to be FSC certified if they want to be able to sell to the leading branded manufacturers of wood and fiber products worldwide.

In Brazil, the pulp and paper industry, major suppliers of KC and other tissue manufacturing companies, have become so focused on FSC certification that their industry association, Bracelpa, has become a major contributor to the costs of FSC-Brazil’s office and a supporter of training workshops that inform the Brazilian paper products industry on the “whys and wherefores” of FSC certification.

Scott: Tell me more about the “whys and wherefores” and the benefits to both the forests and the companies doing business in forestry products.

Michael: Well, on the ground this means a number of important things. FSC requires respect for, and protection of, the rights of indigenous peoples, at levels often beyond the requirements of national legislation. Indigenous groups have now found that FSC is a new and powerful tool in their negotiations with forest products companies about access to, and use of, traditional lands.

FSC also has more stringent rules on environmental management, protection of biodiversity, and reduced areas of clear-cutting, greater setbacks from streams, rivers, and lakes than any other certification system, and stronger than almost any national legislation around the world.  It requires engagement with local communities, protecting them from the negative impacts of logging (i.e. roads and bridges damaged, water polluted, etc.) and encouraging active hiring of local service providers, local technicians, and local labor.

The chain-of-custody certification in the FSC system provides strong assurance that products produced in compliance with the standards can be traced from the forest, through any and all processing, and right down to the final product sold to consumers.

The number of acres certified to FSC standards in North America is now more than 135 million, about one-third of the acres certified worldwide. In terms of the effect on other industry players besides KC, demand for FSC-certified wood and fiber products is booming worldwide.  Our closest aggregate measure of demand for the FSC products is the demand for Chain of Custody certificates, required of companies processing certified wood and fiber for products taken to retail markets with the logo. These have grown from 16,000 worldwide to more than 22,500 (50% growth) over just the last 18 months.

Scott: And how did KC come out of all this?

Michael: KC rolled out its first KC Professional FSC toilet paper and other products in late 2010 (KC Professional serves hotels and other business/institutional buyers).  It began selling Kleenex with an FSC logo on the bottom of the box at Costco stores late last year, and it is now going national throughout the US, supplying “FSC Kleenex” to virtually all consumer outlets.  An amazing transformation in just two years!

Scott: Excellent. It will be interesting to watch the response of consumers to the logo. Thanks for your time, Michael!

Sevenly was formed to help charities by selling t-shirts to raise awareness, increase following and provide additional funding. Sevenly’s mission is to help people, fund worthy causes, and offer the “magic kick” some charities need to keep changing the world.

So far, Sevenly has raised a total of $38,304, according to their website. Past causes include a day of medical care and food for girls rescued from the sex trade, relief for Haiti, and clean drinking water for families in Rwanda, among others. In fact, for each past campaign, Sevenly’s website records how much money was raised and how many people’s lives were improved.

And the “Tees” are cool! Check them out – they change each and every week – so supplies are limited!

Fair Trade Sports was more than happy to help bring RESPECT to the people of Ometepe through donating RESPECT soccer balls to the schools of Ometepe through the annual student exchange. This year also marked the 20th anniversary of the student exchange program, where students from Bainbridge spend two weeks with host families on the island of Ometepe. Ometepe families open their homes to the students and help them experience life in a different culture and, in exchange, Bainbridge students work on various community service projects.

The Bainbridge students were asked to fill their checked bags with 100 pounds of school materials – including Fair Trade Sports RESPECT soccer balls – as a donation to Ometepe  schools.

Twenty-four students and eight chaperones spread out among four different towns, Moyogalpa, Sacramento, Angul, and San Pedro. In Sacramento, the students helped paint the school and improve school security by placing locks on doors. The six high school students spent time playing with the young students, becoming acquainted with rural life on Ometepe, and enjoying Nicaraguan food. At the end of their stay, they organized a carnival for the elementary school students with games, piñatas, and food.

The other towns were Moyogalpa (where they worked on building a soccer field for the high school), Angul (where they worked on building a sidewalk for a very small rural community), and San Pedro (where they also painted the school).

Where are you bringing RESPECT? Send us your stories!

This piece originally appeared on Forbes.

This month I sat down with John Perkins, the author of the New York Times bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and many other titles, and former chief economist at a major international consulting firm.

Scott: Tell me about your work with business students around the US, particularly as it relates to Corporate Social Responsibility.

John: We talk about what’s really important for any business leader to understand today. We have moved into a new era where people understand we’ve created a failed system.  When less than 5 percent of the world’s population live in the United States and consume more than 25 percent of the world’s resources, while roughly half the world is either starving or on the verge of starvation — the only way you can define that system is as a failure.

It’s not a model that we can sell to Africa or Latin America or India.  It’s not something we want to pass onto our children.  And an awful lot of business people are beginning to understand this.  Young people are getting it, including young MBA students. Those who are going to be running our companies in the future years are waking up to these facts. I’m very familiar with this, because I’m going out and meeting with them, speaking to them in large assemblies and at much smaller gatherings, going to classes with them, and teaching classes for them.

Any responsible executive today of any corporation needs to understand that this is the future.  And let’s face it: people who stay with the status quo have never been the really successful ones in history.  The ones who understand future trends have always been the ones to prosper most.

When city-states became nations, very few people understood the implications, but the Medici did. They knew that their bank wasn’t any longer just about Florence. They needed to go to Venice. They needed to go all over Europe. They got it, and as a result were very successful.

We’re in a stage like that today where things are changing radically.  We’re moving from this time that was defined, when I was a young person in the ’50s and ’60s, as the time to just continually expand materialism, produce things that seemed to make life easier – vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, mass-produced food, etc.  Now we’re moving into a time when people are really getting the fact that we have to be sustainable, that that has to be the driving force.

And sustainability includes social justice. So we can’t be sustainable if people in the world are starving and being exploited. That’s not working. It seeds the roots of turmoil, even terrorism, and it creates tremendous problems for our children. We’re now finally beginning to understand these new facts of life, and our young people are waking up the fastest.

Corporate executives who understand these new trends and steer their companies in directions that recognize(s) that they are not just about making profits regardless of the social and environmental costs will thrive.

When I went to business school in the late ‘60s we were taught that a good CEO is like a good soldier – he protects the long-term interests of his employees and the communities where they live and work, as well as looking out for the interests of his stockholders. That all changed in the ‘70s and 80’s with the adoption of what we now think of as the theories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. They said that the sole responsibility of business is to maximize profits regardless of everything else. They said: to hell with the long term and the idea of being socially and environmentally responsible! But today we are understanding that profits are not the sole responsibility of business.

We recognize – as our grandparents did – that to be responsible and successful, businesses are going to have to pay decent rates of return to their investors while taking into account the creation of a world that we want to pass onto our children; a sustainable world, a just world, a world where everybody can thrive on some level.

All executives – even executives of corporations that today appear extremely successful and profitable – need to understand that their corporations are very vulnerable to these future trends. They need to get on the sustainability bandwagon; the ones who do so are going to be successful in this new era.

But many business leaders who are already CEOs and CFOs, who graduated with my generation – 30 or more years ago, often take the attitude that this is their system, and that as far as they’re concerned, everything’s working just fine. They are wrong and ultimately they – or their companies – will pay a very high price for these outdated attitudes.

Scott: What does a world look like without CSR…where corporations are all simply responsible enough that we don’t need to tack a CSR department onto them?

John: We have a precedent in this country for that.  For the first hundred years that the United States was a nation, no corporation could get a charter unless it proved that it was going to serve a public interest.  Charters lasted on average for ten years.  There were exceptions – such as building a highway or a bridge –  but on average ten years.  Then the corporation had to go back and prove that IT had met the public interest and would continue to do so, in order to renew its charter.

That all changed in the 1880s when the Supreme Court decided that corporations had the rights of individuals but not the responsibilities, and we’ve been moving further and further in that direction ever since.  “Citizens United” is the most recent example.

There’s a backlash today. The general population – despite the recent Supreme Court rulings that seem to favor corporations – are really beginning to get it.  that backlash is going to increase as people decide they only want to support corporations that really are committed to creating a better future, to serving a public interest.

Scott: As this backlash is happening people are not only reacting against the negative but also moving towards the positive. What are the positive aspects within CSR that you’re seeing abroad from which the North American CSR community could benefit?

John: In the last decade, we’ve witnessed a revolution in Latin America against the form of capitalism that I call “predatory capitalism,” the Milton Friedman form of capitalism.  We’ve seen ten countries which represent roughly 80 percent of the population of South America vote during democratic elections for presidents who campaigned with the promise of reigning in the corporations.

These countries are not getting rid of the corporations, not nationalizing them, not driving them out – because they recognize that they need them – but saying to these corporations, “If you’re going to drill for oil here in Ecuador, or if you’re going to drill for gas here in Bolivia, or grow bananas in El Salvador, that’s okay, but you must share a larger percentage of the profits with our people.  You’ve got to pay higher taxes, and you’ve got to pay higher wage rates.  You must make sure that the people working on these projects are adequately compensated and that they’re not working as slaves to you. And you have to offer the same protections for our environment as those required in alaska and other states.”

The old model used to be that when a foreign corporation went into another country, it would set up a contract whereby it got about 80 percent of the profits, and the country got 20 percent. The new leaders are changing this. For example, Rafael Correa who’s president of Ecuador and has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois understands the system, he’s a capitalist. He’s not trying to get rid of corporations, but he is asking the corporations to stop externalizing the costs associate with destroying the local environment and exploiting local populations. Correa, like other latin leaders, is demanding that corporations internalize those costs and that they return a much larger percentage of the profits to the people. These presidents are not asking for a reversal of the 80-20 formula but they are asking for something that is fairer for their people.

Every one of these countries, for most of my lifetime, was run by brutal dictators often put into power by our own CIA. Now, in peaceful, democratic elections all that has changed. I want to point out that these countries are not opposed to the United States.  They’re not anti-American.  They’re not anti-corporation.  They’re just trying to say, “Listen, you’ve got to be socially and environmentally responsible if you want to work on our lands.”  And the interesting thing is that many of the corporations – the ones that will truly thrive – are getting it.

I recently was a keynote speaker at a conference which was held in Panama which was primarily CEOs and CFOs of extractive industries in Latin America, mostly Canadian companies.

Before I accepted the invitation, I asked them, “Why me?  What do you think I’m going to offer you?”

They said that policies in Latin America have changed. These elections have proven that business is not “as usual.” They told me, “We still want the minerals, and we understand we have to be good neighbors. We hear what they’re saying, and we want to cooperate.” these are very forward-looking senior business leaders saying they get it, and that they want to move forward. They want to be at the top of the curve, to continue to innovate and be the pioneers in this new and changing business environment.

That’s the real message today from all over the world – what I find in China and Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. People understand that capitalism is a very effective system to channel human and natural resources and to apply creativity in areas that result in very productive activities. Now it simply needs to redefine its objectives. Capitalism must accept a goal not just of making profits but also of serving a public interest. When it does that, we arrive at a win-win, a true partnership. Those who understand this will become leaders in this new era. They will thrive, prosper, profit, and create beneficial environments for themselves, their customers, their suppliers, their employees, and the communities in which they work. And for their progeny.

Scott: Yes, definitely a more equitable and respectful relationship, one that can be sustained indefinitely. Any parting words of wisdom?

John: Simply this – that any truly responsible businessperson has to look to the long term. Bonuses may be measured by the quarterly profit statements but true success has to be long-term. As a society, as a species, it is imperative that we understand the importance of creating a world our grandchildren will want to inherit.

Fair Trade is catching on – Many people now know it’s socially responsible to buy Fair Trade products. After all, the ultimate goal – as explained by Fair Trade USA – is to alleviate poverty in communities around the world. But did you know that Fair Trade also stands for quality?

Fair Trade couldn’t survive without quality  –  even the most socially-conscious consumers don’t want to spend money on poorly crafted goods or bad-tasting coffee. Producing quality products helps Fair Trade-certified farmers and workers compete in the global market.

Spend two minutes to check out Fair Trade USA’s third film in the new micro-doc series that helps explain Fair Trade in two minutes or less – this time focusing on farmers in Rwanda and how they are investing their premium funds in quality control initiatives.

Courts for Kids teamed with ALMA, a Christian organization that serves the needs of the Yanadi people in the Nellore area of Andhra Pradesh, to  build a multi-purpose basketball court for a Yanadi orphanage. The Yanadi people have been historically oppressed and marginalized and many in this area have recently been selling their own women out of desperation.

The court was completed – by a Vancouver, Wash.-based volunteer group – after four days of hard work in intense heat, often reaching up to 115 degrees. At the end of the project, the group conducted sports clinics – and enjoyed the sound of children’s’ laughter and basketballs bouncing on the new court.

According to one of the volunteer’s, “the sound of the basketballs bouncing was one of the most beautiful sounds I had ever heard, and that’s why we built the court. Those kids are learning new skills, and new ways to have fun. They probably won’t grow up to be basketball stars, but they will all gain joy from just playing and being kids.”