During the Lenten season, Operation Rice Bowl gives us many different opportunities to Pray, Fast, Learn and Give. This week the program is reflecting on Catholic Relief Services’ work in the South American country of Bolivia.
Recently the Fair Trade team received a progress report from our CRS Bolivia colleagues working on the ASOVITA project, an effort to help small-scale farmers establish sustainable and fair businesses. The Fair Trade Fund is supporting an emphasis on fair or “solidarity” trading principles such as sharing “market intelligence” and building the capacity to create alliances among small business and government. In Bolivia, 40 percent of the population works in agriculture. We encourage you to place 40 cents a day in your Rice Bowl in solidarity with the Bolivians who earn their living from the land, and in turn, seek to steward it.
This week we also celebrate that Fair Trade colleague Antonia Rodriguez Medrano was recently appointed by President Evo Morales as the new Minister of Productive Development and Plural Economy in Bolivia. Antonia, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a World Fair Trade Organization conference, is the founder of ASARBOLSEM, a grassroots organization that connects groups of handcraft producers and provides marketing services for them on Fair Trade terms. Under Antonia’s leadership, ASARBOLSEM was named one of the United Nation Development Program’s model social enterprises in Latin America.
Nurturing the leadership of women and social enterprise for all is one of the ways Fair Trade promotes economic justice in Bolivia and worldwide!
