Sarah, Laura and Elizabeth in Ghana. Photo:DeCarlo/CRS

Apparently Elizabeth Cole is also well known to Tom Gibbons of the  Busted Halo blog, who sent in this appreciation:

Hardly a month goes by without spotting St. Austin’s parishioner Elizabeth Cole in the courtyard selling Fair Trade chocolate.  Needless to say, she is a very popular person… especially around Christmas time.

“I took the ‘Just Faith’ course about four-to-five years ago and I was struck with two things.  The first was that I was coming late in life to looking at issues of poverty and the like through a justice lens, beyond looking at them through charity.  The second was that I did not want my son and grandson to wait until they were in their forties for them to look at things from a justice perspective either.”

So from that learning experience, Elizabeth decided to create a curriculum in order to educate children on issues of justice.  Her angle: retelling the Parable of the Good Samaritan by including Cocoa Farmers in the story.  She pitched the idea to one of the small Christian communities at St. Austin and used them as a beta test; along the way, University of Texas students Sarah Yanes and Laura Duca decided to help out.

The very next year—with the encouragement of Austin Diocesan Director  Barbara Budde—Elizabeth entered her program into a competition CRS Fair Trade sponsored in order to discover the best educational program for kids.  The grand prize was 10 day trip to visit Ghana and the cocoa fields.  When she won the top prize, Elizabeth asked if she could also bring Sarah and Laura; because the prize only allotted for one person to go, both the parish and the Diocese of Austin contributed funds for the students to go.

“Amazing… CRS does an amazing job in Ghana.”  When I asked her what was the most important “take away” from her trip was, she replied, “It’s one thing to see these issues at play on paper, but it’s another thing to see it first hand.”  She said that the experience gave her a great motivator to keep doing more.  “This system [of Fair Trade] really does work.”

Elizabeth’s next stop: Michigan, so that she can be trained to become a CRS Fair Trade Ambassador.  The people here at St. Austin’s are very glad that she is; Christmas is only eight months away.”

Our own Catholic Relief Services newsletter also featured a story called “Fair Trade Gifts for the Holiday Season” to help us get ready for gift giving at Christmas time. We’ve printed that story below, in case you missed it!

“Better pricing for our baskets has helped us send our children to school. Before, we had to weave all night to pay school fees.” These are the words of Teni Ayamga, a basket weaver from Ghana whose children are able to go to school thanks to fair trade.

A weaver from Trade Aid in Ghana creates a Bolgatanga basket. Photo by Serena Sato/SERRV

Teni is the beneficiary of a trade model that guarantees fair wages to disadvantaged artisans, farmers and workers around the world while providing socially conscious consumers in the United States a way to shop responsibly. By purchasing fair trade products, consumers promote fair wages for impoverished workers in developing countries, and fair trade helps these small-scale farmers and artisans to survive in a very competitive international market.

“Before Trade Aid [a fair trade organization in Ghana], I had to sell in the market and didn’t consider the cost of my skill and the materials. I sold too low. With Trade Aid, I learned to consider the raw materials and workmanship, and I sell my baskets for double,” says Anyopoka Apana, who also earns a living as a basket weaver.

Teni’s and Anyopoka’s baskets are part of a large selection of gift items available through Catholic Relief Services’ Fair Trade program, which also includes coffee, chocolate, specialty food items and other handcrafts. The items were put together by 90 small producer groups and artisans in more than 36 countries throughout the world, and are now available.

CRS has also partnered with 16 coffee companies throughout the United States that are committed to the principles of fair trade. They offer a variety of quality roasts, and with every purchase designated to support CRS, consumers are contributing a percentage to CRS’ Fair Trade Fund, which benefits fair trade organizations in the United States and abroad.

In Madagascar, for example, a CRS grant was used to train Malagasy artisans in product design. Sharing their own skills and learning about product trends—such as a growing interest in recycled materials in the American market—prepared them to more effectively export their products. One of their most popular items, a schoolbag made from recycled denim, has recently been added to CRS’ handcrafts selection. In the United States CRS promotes the bag as a way for students to learn the importance of reusing materials and to learn about the country of Madagascar.
Bolgatanga baskets.

“The bag is an easy way to build understanding about the power of fair trade,” says Jacqueline DeCarlo, program manager for CRS Fair Trade. “The message of recycling materials to protect the planet while promoting opportunities for artisans really resonates with young people.”

For many Catholics, the principles of fair trade closely reflect their values, and the Catholic market for fairly traded goods has seen double-digit growth in recent years. The commitment of Catholics in this country to pay a fair price for the products they enjoy, and to introduce fair trade to their parishes, helps CRS’ long-term efforts of promoting economic justice around the world.

“Fair trade is a very tangible way of supporting farmers and artisans by investing our money in communities that promote opportunity,” DeCarlo says. Last year, more than 130 Catholic dioceses held fair trade sales, selling crafts, coffee and chocolate in their parishes. With their help, CRS’ fair trade sales jumped to $2 million in 2007, a 53 percent increase over the previous year.

Both the fair trade online and printed catalog are filled with an extraordinary selection of fine jewelry, kitchen and tableware, household items, gift baskets, games, accessories, and holiday decorations. By purchasing these fair trade items, everyone wins: consumers get high-quality one-of-a-kind handcrafts and the people who created them get hope for a better future for themselves and their families.

written by Kim Pozniak, a communications officer for CRS based in Baltimore, MD.

“It’s hard to believe but the presidential and congressional elections are only two weeks away.  By now, can you imagine opening the newspaper or watching television without seeing the latest claims and counterclaims by various political candidates?  It feels like we’ve been inundated with political advertisements and slogans – especially those of us who live in those famous “swing” states.

But, of course, who will govern our country from the Oval Office as well as from congressional offices on Capitol Hill is critically important. We hope you are registered to vote and will do so on November 4^th.  As Fair Traders, we should have a particular interest in the elections given our awareness of how our decisions can make a real, positive difference in the world.  Beyond our consumer activism, engagement in the political process and advocacy on public policy issues can bring about real change for our sister and brothers overseas.

In preparation for these elections, the U.S. Catholic Bishops have issued “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship“ – a statement that outlines Catholic teaching on political life.  In their statement the Bishops emphasize that: “In the Catholic Tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation.”

One of the issues the Bishops raise as a serious moral concern “that challenge our consciences and require us to act” is hunger.  Those of us involved in the Fair Trade movement know that hunger is one of those issues that we can address by purchasing products that give poor people a chance to earn a fair wage that in turn will allow them to feed themselves and their families.

But the current global food crisis that is affecting millions of people here at home and overseas is threatening to undermine the progress that has been made to lift people out of poverty.  The most damaging impact of the global food crisis is on the poorest people, who spend a far higher proportion of their income on food. Those who are struggling to pay for food will eat less or cheaper food with less nutritional value. Even the middle class in many developing nations will have to sell their assets to pay for food.

The causes of the current global food crisis are many and complex. An increasing demand for food and energy at a time of low food stocks, poor harvests and weak credit have led to record prices for food.  Also, some subsidies given to farmers in the United States, European Union (EU) and Japan distort the local and global marketplace and have fueled the global food crisis. Each year, the U.S., EU and Japan provide billions of dollars in subsidies to producers of certain agricultural products. In the U.S., 70 percent of these payments go to a small number of producers, with smaller-scale farm and ranch operations in the U.S. at a disadvantage.  U.S. subsidies for biofuel production have also pushed up food prices.

Learn more about global hunger and how you can assess this issue as part of your decision-making process for the upcoming election.   Become a CRS Advocate for ongoing information about how you can advocate for issues that affect poor peoples’ lives year-round. And, certainly, don’t forget to vote on November 4!”

This cocoa farmer in Ghana exercises her right to vote in Kuapa Kokoo's elections.

]]> http://www.crsfairtrade.org/2008/10/22/guest-blog-how-fair-traders-can-be-faithful-citizens/feed/ 0 http://www.crsfairtrade.org/2008/07/15/trade-and-aid-in-ghana/ http://www.crsfairtrade.org/2008/07/15/trade-and-aid-in-ghana/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:09:00 +0000 Jackie http://fairtrade.crs-blog.org/?p=192 Back in the 1960s the international development community coined the phrase “Trade not Aid” as an approach to poverty alleviation. The notion being that, in addition to humanitarian assistance and emergency response, countries facing financial hardship are best served by economic opportunities with other countries. In Ghana, Trade Aid Integrated is a non-profit organization that joins both concepts of assistance and opportunity by helping women from 19 different communities near Bolgatonga, a provincial capital, sell their distinctive and brightly-colored bolga baskets, for local and international sale. Some of the weavers are also beneficiaries of CRS-administered education programs that provide food to school children.

Members of a Frontiers of Justice delegation to Ghana recently visited Trade Aid, and among the visitors was our own Sinead Naughton, who serves as a CRS Fair Trade Ambassador. As someone who has had the privilege of visiting Ghana twice, it was a real treat this morning to see the smiling faces of a weaver and Sinead on the CRS blog! Check out the posting about the FOJ trip to Ghana and Burkina Faso to learn more about how CRS is promoting charity and economic justice in West Africa.

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