CRS Fair Trade News

Guest blog: Spirituality, Sustainability, Solidarity

Jackie — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:40:32 +0000

In this posting, Fr. Juan Molina (seen third from the right with a group of CRS Fair Trade Ambassadors) offers some insights on how to make a connection between Fair Trade and consumer society from the perspective of our Catholic tradition.

“In one talk I did at Southern Methodist University, I focused on the tradition of Living Simply. As many of you may know, that tradition is relatively long but was highlighted in the 1970s and ‘80s and now many college students are beginning to pick it up with a new twist. I spoke about how living simply, in our contemporary world, includes three very contemporary issues: Spirituality, sustainability, and solidarity.

Spirituality: The Simple Living movement and lifestyle has, especially for people of faith, been rooted in a spirituality that acknowledges that more is not necessarily better. Sometimes less is better. In fact, enough is what is really best. Enough to eat, enough to live, enough to be happy. Knowing that God is the one who fulfills all of our longings and desires sometime makes us realize that we do not need it “all.”
Sustainability: With an almost “post-controversial” discussion on the environmental issues, living simply can focus us on the long-term realization that consuming less, especially of the resources that are nonrenewable, is actually a good idea and a good stewardship action to care for our vulnerable earth.
Solidarity: Here is where Fair Trade makes sense. Living simply also incorporates an aspect of being in solidarity with others. The old adage of “living simply so others can simply live” highlights this solidarity. With Fair Trade, simple living goes a step further: we can also shop for things we consume everyday and be in solidarity with those who manufacture some of those products. In addition, the act of solidarity with a person — a producer, a farmer, a craftswoman — can also be an act of solidarity with the earth, as when we purchase organic sustainability produced crafts, coffee and chocolate.”

Fr. Juan is an advocacy program officer for CRS in the Southwest United States. Comment below to let us know how you practice simplicity where you live.

Beyond Dollars and Cents

Jackie — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:11:37 +0000

Hard core Fair Traders often say that the power of the movement is not just about the price of a product. What we mean is that, although promoting a fair and decent standard of living is essential, Fair Trade is much more than just a financial transaction where the farmer or artisan gets a good deal. Fair Trade is about community building, cultural exchange and more. Fair Trader and CRS Fellow Joe Weber was part of this expansive commitment to Fair Trade during his time as a volunteer in Ohio. Please read his article on the CRS.org website to understand how.

Beyond Fair Trade

kcantrel — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:10:30 +0000

As Catholic Relief Services expands its work with small-holder coffee farmers, we’re learning more and more about the benefits and limitations of certification systems and returning to the question of how to make coffee the means to a sustainable livelihood for coffee farmers. Our fully-committed partners on the CRS Coffee Project demonstrate it is possible to have a direct relationship with coffee cooperatives and negotiate a fair trading terms. However, are the various certification systems, including Fair Trade, that fall under the category of sustainable coffees actually producing a sustainable livelihood for small-holder coffee farmers? Michael Sheridan, former program manager of the CRS Fair Trade program in the U.S. and current Regional Technical Advisor on Livelihoods in CRS’ Latin America and the Caribbean office, tackles this issue in the May 2009 edition of InterAction’s Monday Developments Magazine.

Thanks to our friends at InterAction for permission to share Michael’s article below:

BEYOND FAIR TRADE: FROM SUSTAINABLE COFFEES TO SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS
Michael Sheridan, May 2009

Fair Trade has been one of the most celebrated concepts in social entrepreneurship over the past decade. Its explosive growth has been fueled in part by the Fair Trade campaigns of InterAction members. At Catholic Relief Services (CRS), we have increasingly invested in Fair Trade and other “sustainable” coffees. We supported farmer organizations overseas in their efforts to access Fair Trade and organic coffee markets while also promoting the Fair Trade label at home. I was personally involved in these efforts, directing the CRS Fair Trade Program in the U.S. for nearly four years before relocating to Guatemala.

Here, I supervise our CAFE Livelihoods, an $8.2 million project to strengthen farmers’ engagement with high-value coffee markets. We believe Fair Trade and organic certifications represent the best hope for the largest number of farmers to maximize their coffee income, create sustainable grassroots enterprises, and farm in ecologically sustainable ways.

In recent years, however, Fair Trade has been criticized for failing to foster sustainable rural development. The purpose of this piece is not to adjudicate the claims of Fair Trade’s advocates and critics. Instead, I want to focus on three points concerning the ongoing conversation about sustainability in coffee.

First, the debates over the relative merits of Fair Trade and other certifications miss the larger point. None of the competing coffee certifications, either individually or in combination, can ensure truly sustainable smallholder livelihoods. Second, future discussions of coffee sustainability within the industry, development field and
donor community should apply the concept of sustainability to the livelihoods of the smallholder farmers who grow the majority of the world’s coffee. These discussions should center on a holistic vision of sustainability generated on the ground, in coffee growing countries, and not around the narrower standards of certification systems developed in the U.S. and Europe. Finally, the industry, donors and development agencies must invest more in critical issues that lie beyond the coffee chain but threaten the livelihoods of coffee farmers and put the chain itself at risk.

Fair trade and rural livelihoods under pressure
Fair Trade is concerned primarily with improving the terms of trade for smallholder farmers. Over the past decade, it has mitigated price risk and volatility for these farmers by fostering longerterm trading relationships with guaranteed
minimum prices above prevailing market rates. It is a worthy accomplishment. But the primary issue that Fair Trade Certification addresses—unfavorable terms of trade—is only one of the increasing threats to fragile smallholder livelihoods, and not necessarily the most urgent.

Perhaps the most significant limitation of coffee certification schemes in improving smallholder livelihoods concerns
the volume of coffee that smallholders produce. While coffee represents the most significant agricultural activity for most smallholder farmers, it is not the only one. Most also devote a significant portion of their land to other crops. So
even if farmers can sell all their coffee at premium prices— and few are so lucky—the low volume of coffee traded may
limit coffee’s contribution to their overall well-being. And the decreasing size of many small farms due to inheritance and subdivision is only intensifying the pressure on the land and livelihoods.

These vulnerabilities are exacerbated by global shocks like the food price crisis, long-term trends like climate change,
and the constant threat of natural disaster. Collectively, these challenges make smallholder coffee farmers highly susceptible to even the mildest ecological or economic pressure.

In this context, it seems almost unreasonable to expect coffee certification to make much headway. In fact, evidence suggests that even small-scale coffee farmers who sell shadegrown, Fair Trade and organic coffee may be going hungry for as many as four to six months per year.

To cope with economic stress, smallholder farmers turn to short-term strategies that undermine their long-term wellbeing. They buy and eat less food, withdraw children from school, spend less on health care, sell coffee at a fraction of its value, clear-cut forests to sell timber and grow higher-yield crops, take out loans they will struggle to repay, sell
household and productive assets, and leave for longer periods to work elsewhere.

These strategies compromise their future ability to produce large volumes of high-quality coffee. A hungry farmer works less effectively than a well-fed one. A farmer who is away from his fields for months earning money cannot tend to the farm with the care necessary to meet the high quality standards of specialty coffee markets. When capital that should be reinvested in the farm is instead needed to pay interest on a never-ending cycle of debt, productivity declines. Farmers who clear-cut their forests remove the shade that is the foundation of any concept of environmentally friendly coffee. And when desperation finally forces a farmer to sell off land, the availability of coffee is jeopardized. Without investment to address these issues, the gains farmers make through their participation in sustainable coffee markets can be, quite literally, swept away overnight.

Sustainable for whom?
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a sustainable coffee trade must work for all stakeholders in the chain. But today, the entire “sustainable coffee” enterprise is at risk because many smallholder farmers simply do not have livelihoods that are sustainable by any standard. Indicators for “sustainability” in the specialty coffee market are certifications whose standards are set and enforced at the market end of the coffee chain by organizations in the U.S.
and Europe. Meanwhile, at the production end, we see a gap between the reality and the rhetoric of sustainable coffees.
Even some smallholder farmers selling double and triple-certified coffees struggle mightily. The sustainable coffee conversation needs to refocus on coffee origins to address the acute needs of smallholder farmers.

Sustainability 2.0
It is time to expand the concept of sustainability and build on the foundation laid by two generations of sustainability pioneers all along the coffee chain. “Sustainability 2.0” will require new perspectives and non-traditional collaboration among diverse stakeholders.

Development agencies and the donors that fund them will need to couple traditional “development” issues with new disciplines in the field. Too often in the development community we have divorced our work on core issues like food security from narrower, newer pursuits, including the highly specialized technical assistance farmer organizations need to meet the stringent demands of dynamic coffee markets.

For coffee industry actors, this may mean building non-traditional competencies and new investments into their business models to secure supplies of high-quality coffee in competitive markets. Donors and development agencies will need to support the industry in this process and provide expertise in livelihoods issues. We will all need a better understanding of one another’s opportunities and constraints.

The first step, however, is broadening the conversation on sustainable coffees. Leading academics have begun to incorporate livelihoods issues into their analysis of sustainable coffees, but few in the mainstream of the coffee industry, development field or donor community have followed suit. Comprehensive analysis of smallholder farmer livelihoods will reveal potential sources of unsustainability in coffee chains and identify opportunities for new investments beyond them. Sharing examples of successful community-driven interventions that are costeffective
and replicable can help show the way forward.

CRS helps U.S. reclaim Fair Trade title

Jackie — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:48:10 +0000

There’s nothing like a healthy, fun competition to get Fair Traders going. Last month, in honor of World Fair Trade Day, 56,892 participants in more than 450 U.S. events (and the Fair Trade Resource Network is still counting) surpassed Finland’s 2008 record of world’s largest Fair Trade break. Here at CRS in Baltimore we had 57 participants.

Let us know how you celebrated!

Or just ask us why Katy is dressed as a mermaid…it is all in the name of economic justice!

Let the Fair Trade Counting and Celebrating Begin!

Jackie — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:40:03 +0000

Our first World Fair Trade Day dispatch from Jeanine Boucher-Colbert, Youth Programs Officer in Catholic Relief Services-West:

Nearly 2,000 Catholic women and a few brave men gathered for the fourth NW Catholic Women’s Convocation in Bellevue, WA on May 1-2, 2009. On Friday night a group of women volunteers and CRS staff* organized a World Fair Trade Day chocolate tasting for all the participants, thanks to a donation from Equal Exchange, our new chocolate partner. An announcement was made about the CRS Fair Trade Fund support of World Fair Trade Day as the participants enjoyed the chocolate and read about CRS Fair Trade with information cards we provided. Great solidarity moment and effort to help regain the title of World’s Largest Fair Trade Break!

If you want to participate in the World’s Largest Fair Trade Break, be sure and check out the organizing materials of FTRN.

* Far left is CRS Zambia staff Carol Mumba, former CRS volunteeer Margaret Johnson and CRS West staff Jeanine Boucher-Colbert; Far right is Called To Witness alum Ann Labeck. Also in the group: Margie Ames, Archbishop Murphy High School and CRS Cyberbridges teacher, and many Just Faith graduates, friends and parishioners of St, Andrew parish, Portland, Oregon. Photo thanks to Maggie Maggio!

Are You a Fan of Fair Trade?

Jackie — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:52:37 +0000

I’m feeling pretty fortunate at the moment, although the story doesn’t start out so good:

This week Katy and I received an email from somebody who was clearly dubious about the value of Fair Trade. He shared some “supply side” arguments and hinted that maybe Fair Trade was a waste of resources. I think I addressed his concerns by explaining how the principles of Fair Trade mirror those of Catholic Social Teaching. I also assured him that the lion’s share of Catholic Relief Services’ budget is dedicated to assisting the poor and vulnerable overseas.   I acknowledged that Fair Trade has its flaws, but I also shared that CRS is committed to a variety of strategies to confront global poverty.

Okay, all in a day’s work, right? Except that’s actually not the case. Most of my days are FILLED with people who have embraced Fair Trade as a way to express the values of their faith in the marketplace. The entire economic justice team gets inundated with requests for more information and action items. Truth is, there are a lot of CRS Fair Trade fans like you out there!

And, now, just in time for World Fair Trade Day on May 9th, you can show your loyalty to Fair Trade with a festive sticker. Put it on your water bottle, coffee mug, car bumper or bike. Let others know you believe in Fair Trade and help us promote the CRS Fair Trade website! To order this free resource, send an email with your mailing address to resources “at” crs.org. Please let us know how many stickers–up to 20 each person–that you’d like.

And thanks for making my day!

Midwest Fair Traders: Turn out to meet artisans from Peru

Jackie — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:14:57 +0000

A big question for any social movement is “Does it actually make an impact?” Next month, consumers in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will have a chance to hear directly from Peruvian artisans about the difference Fair Trade has made in their lives. Thanks in part to the CRS Fair Trade Fund, our allies at Partners for Just Trade and Green America are celebrating World Fair Trade Day with artisans Evangelina Pizarro and Ayde Riveros. The women are spending several weeks visiting communities in the Midwest. If you are in that region, check out the tour schedule to learn more!

A Reminder of How Fair Trade Transforms

kcantrel — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:58:51 +0000

A note from SERRV, CRS’ partner on the Work of Human Hands project

SERRV’s Madison office was honored to host two guests from our partner MCCH Ecuador. MCCH is an acronym for Maquita Cushunchic, which in indigenous Quechua language means ‘let’s join hands and market as brothers.’ MCCH started in 1985 with the help of Catholic organizations working in Quito, and they remain committed to the highest social and Christian ideals.

Augusto spoke with us about building a ’solidarity economy’, and defined this as a new economic model that involves all aspects of wellbeing – work, environment, and human – and has people, not capital, at the core.

He told us that Fair Trade is a primary aspect of this through building a fair market.

His words were a reminder to us of how Fair Trade often transforms lives by being part of a broader change!

Augusto Estrella and SERRV's Jean Johnson (who translated)

Mark Earth Day by taking the St. Francis Pledge

Jackie — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:48:30 +0000

We thank Dan Misleh of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for this Earth Day call to action:

As the United States marks Earth Day, USCCB and CRS are among the national Catholic organizations calling on Catholic individuals and families, parishes and schools, religious communities, colleges and hospitals and other Catholic organizations to take a unique St. Francis Pledge to Care for Creation and the Poor.

The efforts of the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change respond to and build upon the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI, the U.S. Catholic Bishops, and many Catholic religious communities who believe that our response to climate change must be guided by the exercise of prudence, the pursuit of the common good and a priority for the poor. A list of coalition members is below.

YOU are asked to take the St Francis Pledge to Care for Creation and the Poor by promising to:
• PRAY and reflect on the duty to care for God’s creation and the poor and vulnerable;
• LEARN about and educate others on both the reality of climate change and its moral dimensions;
• ASSESS your participation in contributing to climate change (i.e. consumption and conservation);
• ACT to change your choices and behaviors contributing to climate change and;
• ADVOCATE Catholic principles and priorities in climate change discussions and decisions, especially as they impact the poor and vulnerable.

The coalition’s website offers concrete help in carrying out the St Francis Pledge with specific ways for Catholics to learn to “tread lightly and act boldly”, reducing your own carbon footprint as an expression of solidarity with those most impacted by climate change.

“The real ‘inconvenient truth’,” according to John Carr of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “is that those who contribute the least to climate change in our own country and around the world will suffer the most and have least capacity to respond. Poor families and vulnerable workers and farmers are most likely to bear the greatest burdens in responding to climate change. We believe an essential moral measure of the debate and decisions on climate change will be how it helps or hurts the poor and vulnerable in the U.S. and abroad.”

In addition to CRS and USCCB, organizational partners and sponsors of the Covenant Campaign include:

Catholic Charities USA serving nearly 8 million people in more than 1700 local Catholic Charities agencies and institutions.

The Catholic Health Association of the United States serving one in six Americans in hospitals

The National Catholic Education Association, the largest private education system in the world

The Conference of Major Superiors of Men and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious representing hundreds of religious communities who lead with a sense of mission and real world examples of how to care for people in poverty and for God’s gift of creation.

The Franciscan Action Network,

the National Council of Catholic Women

the National Catholic Rural Life Conference

the National Federation of Priests’ Councils,

the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and many others.

Climate Contest Update: CRS wins! Farmers win!

Jackie — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:48:44 +0000

A very timely greeting from our colleague Michael Sheridan, based in Guatemala:

Happy Earth Day from Latin America! Today Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced it selected our entry in the Changing Climate Change as one of four winners! We want to thank everyone who logged onto JustMeans over the last month or so to support our entry! Your support and that of Green Mountain means CRS now has the opportunity to work over the next several years with our partners at CIAT (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture). CRS and CIAT will implement the project we are calling CUP—Coffee Under Pressure: Climate Change Adaptation in Mesoamerica. CUP will help the smallholder coffee farmers we accompany adapt more effectively to the likely impacts of climate change.

Smallholder farmer livelihoods are very fragile indeed, and climate change threatens to make them even more vulnerable. We believe this project will help give farmers the information they need to make good decisions about their futures as farmers. Thanks again for helping to make it possible!

To read more recent news from the field, visit the CRS website.

Serving farmers through holistic, market-based development

Jackie — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:44:29 +0000

While Katy and I are on the road, returning from the Specialty Coffee Association conference, we share this press release about the work of our colleagues overseas:

Today Catholic Relief Services is launching a worldwide agricultural strategy that adopts a holistic, market-oriented approach to help lift millions of people out of poverty. The five-year strategy aims to help farmers and farming communities both to recover from disasters like drought and pest infestation, as well as to support chronically hungry, agriculturally-dependent communities as they move toward development and self-sufficiency.

“This is a new way of thinking about development that is much more inclusive and less compartmentalized than the approaches we’ve used before,” said CRS President Ken Hackett. “Agriculture serves as a platform to respond to a wide range of inter-connected needs including increasing household income, health and nutrition, environmental stewardship and natural disasters. We believe that this holistic, market-oriented approach to agricultural development will be an effective way of helping the poorest rural families poor climb out of their desperate condition.”

Over the years, CRS has become very proficient in providing relief following disasters and other emergencies. In the agricultural sector, this meant helping to provide critical assets that people and communities need to begin farming again. In fostering the transition from relief to development, our focus was on increasing agricultural production, with the goal of restoring the ability of farm families to feed themselves.

This approach is still necessary and valid. But over time, we have come to a fuller understanding that the best way to help poor rural people move out of poverty and achieve integral human development is to boost household income in a sustained way. We concluded that building the capacity of poor farmers to engage in profitable enterprises had to become a core component of our agricultural development strategy.

In response, CRS, in collaboration with dozens of public, private and community-based partners, has devised this strategy for helping poor farmers link to markets where they can increase their incomes by profitably selling their crops. This agroenterprise approach has become the focus of CRS’ agricultural strategy.

At the field level, this strategy is reflected in a number of activities and investments:

• In Tanzania, farmers have organized themselves into microfinance self-help groups, enabling them to obtain financing to pay for chickpea seed, fertilizer and postharvest marketing. This linkage between microfinance and agriculture has not only made the local farmers’ groups much stronger, but it has also significantly improved their profits.

• In Ethiopia, farmers have begun growing navy beans and have found a buyer in one of the top sellers of baked beans in England.

• In East Africa, we are working to integrate technology into crop disease prevention, using sturdy but inexpensive laptop computers to gather vital data in the field. CRS has been awarded a $100,000 grant from Intel’s INSPIRE•EMPOWER Challenge to help fund this initiative. The computers will be used as part of the Great Lakes Cassava Initiative, a six-country program in which CRS is working with a consortium of partners to provide disease resistant planting materials to counter two pandemic diseases (cassava mosaic disease and cassava brown streak) that are causing losses of up to 80% in areas affected by the diseases.

• In Haiti, farmers are suffering from a combination of excessive erosion, water scarcity and increasingly volatile weather conditions. CRS is working with local government and communities to develop more sustainable farming systems based on intensive watershed management rehabilitation, which will enable communities to adapt to climate change and build more productive agricultural systems.

The strategy reflects the views of field staff, partners and the private sector from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East which were captured through a series of consultative meetings over the past 18 months. It addresses key issues that have surfaced in the last decade in terms of market reform, urbanization and technical innovations. It also addresses the emerging threats posed by more volatile social, economic and climatic conditions that come from an increasingly populated, globalized and urbanized world.

Why Are You Reading this Blog Posting?

Jackie — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:53:20 +0000

As folks transition into Easter weekend, I want to ask a quick favor: please let us know why you read this blog and why you visit our CRS Fair Trade website.

In the coming months, CRS Fair Trade will be redesigning this site to help users like you find the most useful information in the best possible way. Your experience and suggestions are needed! Would you please answer a few questions to help our redesign effort? This online survey should take only a few minutes: http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/252078/417d/

Please respond by Tuesday, April 21st.

If you have any questions about the survey, please feel free to post a comment. Although our offices will be closed for Good Friday, we will try to respond quickly.

We look forward to hearing from you via the survey:
http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/252078/417d/

And we wish you a blessed Easter weekend!

Your Fair Trader has arrived, in Spanish too!

Jackie — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:02:57 +0000

Last week we e-mailed our Fair Trader newsletter that comes out every two months. If you didn’t receive it, please subscribe! This month we featured a variety of stories about CRS Fair Trade:

* Breaking the Record: The World’s Biggest Coffee Break
* Raising Money Right with Fair Trade Chocolate
* Fair Trade = Good News
* Catholics Confront Global Poverty
*The 3rd annual Global Solidarity Conference

We also included news blasts about the wider movement. One of the newsletter stories, about Fair Trade Ambassador Valerie Lizarraga, is also available in Spanish by visiting crsespanol.org

Proud of the Company We Keep

Jackie — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:55:20 +0000

In recent weeks, CRS Fair Trade partners have received a lot of attention. Katy told you about our coffee partner, Pura Vida, being featured on the PBS News Hour. The next weekend at the Fair Trade Federation conference, our craft and chocolate partner, SERRV, received the “Outstanding Service to the Fair Trade Community” award. Equal Exchange’s Interfaith program, our coffee and chocolate partner, was named “Best Public Education Program.” This was the latest in a string of well-deserved awards for Equal.

While CRS Fair Traders are mostly a modest group, it is nice to see our partners getting some recognition! We know of their commitment to producers and their efforts to make trade fairer and more sustainable. We are glad the wider world is noticing too!
Kathy Harley accepts SERRV's award

March Madness: Help CRS (and the farmers we serve) score a big win!

kcantrel — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:09:05 +0000

A big thank you to everyone that voted in the first round of the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Challenge! Thanks to your votes we’ve advanced to the second round and are even closer to winning $200,000 to help coffee farmers respond to the effects of climate change.

Below you’ll find all the details of our proposal and the voting process. We’ll be sending this out to our CRS network and please send it out to yours. Don’t forget to take a moment to vote for our proposal by this Friday, April 3!

Here’s a note from our colleagues in Latin America. Please note that voting ends Friday.

Great news! Our proposal to help family coffee farmers in Latin America adapt to climate change has been selected as a finalist in the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Climate Challenge! Since Green Mountain is awarding grants in four categories, I guess you could say we have made the Final Four!

Many thanks to all those who voted to support our project concept during the first round of voting. Now we are on to the second round, and you have only until Friday, April 3, to vote to make it a winner!

The Issue.

Climate change is changing the face of agriculture all over the planet. Since a specific crop can only thrive under certain environmental conditions, the increases in average temperatures and the radical changes in rainfall are changing our understanding of what can grow well where—what we call “land-use patterns.” The outlook for coffee farmers in Mexico and Central America is pretty grim. Under some scenarios, coffee could disappear altogether from some of the leading coffee-growing regions in Central America in the next generation or so.

The Proposal.

We have been invited by our friends at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia to partner to help small-scale family farmers adapt to these changes. We will help CIAT gather data from some of the more than 7000 farmers who are participating in our CAFE Livelihoods project in Mexico and Central America. CIAT will use that data to support its very fancy “crop targeting” models that help show land-use patterns will likely change over time in the places where we are working. Together, we will share that information with farmers and help them make better decisions about how they will farm into the future.

The Process.

Green Mountain has developed a creative two-tier system for this particular version of March Madness. On one level, the company has invited folks like you all around the world to vote for the proposals you like best at JustMeans. That process ends on April 3. On another level, Green Mountain has assembled a team from within its company to review the proposals and vote (kind of like the popular vote and the electoral college). Once the votes are in, Green Mountains “electors” will take them and the proposals into consideration and announce a winner on Earth Day, April 22.

What You Can Do.

Log on and vote! Ask your friends and families and neighbors to do the same! (FYI,you will need to register with JustMeans in order to vote.)

Raise Money Right is Reborn!

kcantrel — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:03:31 +0000

You may be thinking, “Raise Money Right…, that’s old news. It’s been around for a while.” Well, get ready for some new Raise Money Right news. Raise Money Right has a new partner, new materials and new zeal to help you reach your fundraising goals!

People know that how you fundraise says a lot about your group. With the push for green and ethical fundraisers, as well as an increasing need to find additional funding for special projects in your community, CRS Fair Trade has renewed our efforts to help you Raise Money Right.

The New Raise Money Right Flyer

In response to increasing demand, we’ve added a new partner to Raise Money Right, Equal Exchange. Equal Exchange has an outstanding record offering educational Fair Trade fundraisers to secular groups and has specially designed materials for Catholic communities. Their fundraising toolkit will help you organize your volunteers and prepare them to answer questions about Fair Trade and the cooperatives where your chocolate is sourced from.

So much of the success of Raise Money Right has been from the very popular Divine Chocolate fundraiser offered by SERRV. SERRV has developed a new fundraising flyer and tally sheet for your fundraiser, as well as special pricing on three varieties of Divine Chocolate when you buy a minimum of 5 identical cases.

SERRV and Equal Exchange are fantastic, fully committed Fair Trade organizations and each offers something different, so be sure to check them both out! And remember, now is the perfect time to approach your school administration about holding a Raise Money Right Fair Trade chocolate fundraiser. Many schools make their fundraising decisions a year in advance, so don’t wait to talk to your administration about Raising Money Right!

Be One of a Million Catholics Confronting Global Poverty

kcantrel — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:01:34 +0000

Global poverty is a complex problem. While Fair Trade is one way to help small-scale farmers and artisans have a more secure income and a voice in their community, there are many other pieces to the puzzle that forms a truly sustainable livelihood. Without all those pieces in place, substantial successes can quickly be jeopardized by shocks, like a death in the family, a drought, a conflict in the community, etc.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has developed a holistic approach for Catholics to respond to global poverty entitled Catholics Confront Global Poverty. This new initiative calls for action in the areas of US international assistance, international peacekeeping and peacebuilding, debt relief, global trade and agricultural policies, natural resources, migration, and global climate change.

The goal of Catholics Confront Global Poverty is to educate and mobilize one million Catholics in the United States to “defend the life and dignity of people living in poverty throughout the world, and urge our nation to act in response to the many faces of poverty.”

The USCCB focuses on global trade as a part of its teaching and advocacy on economic justice, and in particular on how trade policy impacts developing countries that are seeking to reduce poverty and increase their peoples’ income by selling their goods in the global marketplace. The USCCB has offered a moral framework, closely aligned with the principles of Fair Trade, against which trade agreements and trade policies should be judged.

Through the CCGP initiative you can put your Fair Trade practices toward advocating for a more just global trade system and addressing the multiple factors causing poverty around the world. Please visit the CCPG website to join one million Catholics confronting global poverty!

‘Egg On’ a Politician with Divine Chocolate

kcantrel — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:16:24 +0000

Join Divine Chocolate and ‘egg on’ a politician to keep fair trade for Africa on the agenda at the upcoming G20 summit in London on April 2nd. Play their online game at www.eggapolitician.com.

As part of the fun, players are invited to throw a chocolate egg to one of the five leaders attending the G20 summit – Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, Manmohan Singh or Wen Jiabao. The chocolate eggs are eaten with relish and each toss is registered as a vote of encouragement to the selected leaders. Players also can send an email to the G20 summit reminding members not to let trade slip off the agenda, and keep up the momentum to ensure fairer trade opportunities for Africa.

Over the last 10 years Divine has given consumers the opportunity to make trade work for cocoa farmers in West Africa while enjoying delicious chocolate. This game offers another opportunity to have a voice on fair trade and to have fun too.

Go to www.eggapolitician.com now and when you are done be sure to tell a friend.

Celebrating Fair Trade Success at Home and Worldwide

Jackie — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:48:02 +0000

When you turn on the radio and hear about nation-wide job loss, perhaps even in your own family, or when you read about long-standing struggles with diseases like TB, you may feel discouraged and uncertain. Fair Trade gives us some good news to share, along with proven ways to build an economy for everyone.

This year Portland, Oregon plays host to the annual Fair Trade Federation conference and birthday celebration. FTF has been around for 15 years now, an association of organizations fully committed to business models that promote principles such as dialogue, transparency, and respect. The FTF just released their latest Trends Report—thanks in part to a donation from the CRS Fair Trade Fund—and much of the news is good!

•    Seventy-six percent of production by FTF partners comes from female producers, as Fair Trade continues to be a mechanism for women’s empowerment.
•    Sales for FTF members grew from $499,893 in 2006 to $517, 385 in 2007.   A report from FINE (a global consortium) shows that global Fair Trade sales in 2007 reached $2.5 billion!
•    Almost 14 percent of FTF members have been in business for more than 20 years, demonstrating some impressive staying power. At the same time, almost half of FTF members were established in the past six years, indicating growth in Fair Trade shopping opportunities.

Here at CRS Fair Trade, we have been experiencing more and more commitment to Fair Trade by the US Catholic community. In 2008:

•    There were more than 1,000 Work of Human Hands events.
•    U.S. Catholics drank more than ½ million dollars worth of Fair Trade coffee.
•    About 600 communities were able to Raise Money Right enjoying Fair Trade chocolate and learning about Catholic Social Teaching.

All this is possible because in good times and bad, you participate in CRS Fair Trade. Each sale helps build income and community stability overseas AND connects you to a global community working to recover and thrive!

Fair Trade Ideas for World Fair Trade Day May 9th

Jackie — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:52:37 +0000

Yesterday I mentioned Catholic Relief Services’ national and regional plans for World Fair Trade Day and encouraged you to get started on your own events. Of course, we try to practice what we preach here at CRS Fair Trade! Here’s what we’ve cooked up:

Despite being a very multicultural organization, CRS Fair Trade is going to claim a little bit of USA pride. Last year more than 12,000 Fair Traders in the United States set the World’s Record for Largest Fair Trade break. Soon thereafter, however, about 50,000 residents of Finland took away the title!

This May, Fair Traders in the USA are going to try to win back from the good people of Finland the bragging rights for World’s Largest Fair Trade break. Because CRS recently expanded our Raise Money Right project to include both Divine and Equal Exchange chocolate, we will be offering a chocolate break to our staff in Baltimore on the eve of the big day.

But Fair Trade isn’t free my friends…CRS employees will be challenged to win chocolate by scoring a goal using a Fair Trade Sports soccer ball. With many employees from Africa and Latin America where soccer (or futbol) is very popular, we expect to be awarding lots of chocolate during our friendly competition in the CRS lunchroom (no worries, nothing is breakable up there on the 8th floor!)

Even if staff have no soccer skills, they’ll have a chance to buy chocolate as a fundraiser for the overseas work of Catholic Relief Services. If you are looking for a simple, fun and effective way to take a Fair Trade break on or about May 9, please consider holding a Raise Money Right fundraiser in your community. When you order organizing material from World Fair Trade Day organizers you’ll get a tally sheet to help keep count of how many participants you had, and when you order chocolate you’ll get all the details on how to use this fun global moment to raise money for worthy local causes.

To encourage our hard working staff to leave their desks for the break, Katy has agreed to dress up as a fish and parade through our LEED-certified building. I will be pounding on a drum as Mary chants, “Beat the Fins, not just the drums!”   Get it? Fins? Finland? Silly? yes, we agree. But in these tough economic times, which hit the poorest of the poor the hardest, we need to take time out to celebrate our successes, to spread our passion, and to remember “everything’s better when its fair.”

There’s plenty of free information on how to organize your own event. Also several supporters of the day, such as CRS partners Peace Coffee and Divine Chocolate are providing incentives for planning an event. So please join us!