This recent “All Hallows Eve” 25 youth and youth ministers from the Orlando, Florida Diocese passed up a “normal” Halloween to participate in the first ever Youth Ministry Fair Trade Weekend. Guest blogger and CRS Fair Trade Ambassador Stephanie Bosse shares her reflections:
“The service retreat was put together by Prince of Peace Youth Minister Mike Buckler with support from me and Catholic Relief Services Southeast Program Officer Simone Blanchard. We entitled the experience, “Just Like You.” The mission of our time together was to teach the group how to be, from the words of the Matt Maher song, “Holy, just like Christ,” and advocates of the poor as He has asked us to be.
The group made a 6-plus hour drive from the coast of Florida to Americus, Georgia, home to CRS Fair Trade coffee partner Cafe Campesino, the famous Habitat for Humanity, and Koinonia, birthplace of the “Cotton Patch Gospels.” Staying at the intentional community of Koinonia was a real solidarity experience. The people there live in some ways much like the farmers in Fair Trade cooperatives. They are a people committed to sharing resources and wealth to create a lifestyle that is good for all. We got a glimpse of this experience with simple accommodations, some of us even slept on the chapel pews. We realized, though, that the people of Koinonia live simply out of choice, while those of Fair Trade cooperatives do this out of necessity.
Saturday morning was spent working at the most tedious of jobs possible: picking up sticks and pulling out pecans from hiding spaces in gullies. The machinery at Koinonia cannot pick up the pecans until all errant limbs have been cleared from the rows. The machinery also is incapable of getting the ripened pecans out of the long gullies on the land so they must be gathered by hand. 
It was good work, boring work, reflective work and a visit with the staff of the local Fair Trade company, Cafe Campesino pulled together how our labor allowed us to stand in solidarity with coffee growers around the world. CEO Tripp Pomeroy helped us process our day by asking about how work that day had been for us. Was it tedious? Was it long, boring, monotonous? Then Tripp asked, did you do it for 12 hours? Sunup to sundown? Did you do the work on a steep incline high up in the mountains? Did you have to pick which sticks were ripe and which were not? Comparing our conditions to those of coffee farmers in mountain highlands definitely put our work, and our blessings, into proper perspective.
At one point during Tripp’s talk, youth minister Mike Buckler was struck by new understanding for Fair Trade. Mike asked all of us, “Do you understand what power you have? That just by purchasing Fair Trade coffee alone, you have the power to make real change? YOU have the POWER to save lives…” By choosing to purchase organically grown, Fair Trade coffee, WE have the POWER to answer Christ’s question of Peter, to love Christ as he asked the rock of our church…to feed his sheep!
After the coffee house, we returned to Koinonia for a heavy and dramatic conclusion to our day, watching the movie “Romero.” Seeing the struggle of the poor first hand, the struggle of people to gain democracy, and even the struggle of the Archbishop himself prompted the kids to ask, “Why did it take the Archbishop so long to change, so long to ‘get it’?” In that moment the weekend came full circle: It did take Archbishop Oscar Romero a long time to SEE, to answer his own calling; and the same can be said for each of us as followers of Christ. We often come to the simplest changes slowly.
What I personally gathered from the weekend more than anything was a thought on value. Fair Trade asks us to give value to people: to value their work, to value their dignity and simply, to assign the proper value, economically, to their labor. What struck me was our own personal value: that upon our birth we had already been given from Christ a unique and changeless value, a worth more than gold and rubies and our value is Heaven. So often in the Gospels Christ told us: the last shall be first, the rich man will have a hard time making it into heaven, feed my sheep, what you do for the least you do for me. For me, Fair Trade is a commitment to the value He has given us all. It is like one small ticket on the train to heaven.
The weekend wrapped up with the re-commitment to our baptismal promises and a talk from Simone on ‘where we go from here,’ so that we can become advocates in our daily lives. After a Spirit-filled commission service, the kids were off with new awareness in their lives, with the commitment to teach others how they too can be CRS Fair Traders. I believe All Saints Day lived up to its name. Both youth and adults in our group transformed through experiencing life on the land, reflecting on the path of Saints, and acknowledging how they are “just like” farmers and artisans around the world. Surely, they are saints in the making.”
Retreat participants sang songs as well as picked pecans!
