Blessings for a New Year
For the Feast of the Epiphany, former CRS West Relationship Manager Jeanine Boucher-Colbert sent us this lovely reflection as we head into 2015. Jeanine had to step away from her work at CRS for medical reasons, but we’re so proud she continues to spread the good news about fair trade!
New Year’s abrazos and blessings to each of you! Thank you for your continued prayers for me and my family. I also pray for you all as well as you do your great work in this beautiful and aching world.
My in-laws invited our family to the Dominican Republic for a 50th anniversary celebration - a most decadent, privileged and lovely family reunion and vacation, my first in 18 months. It has been a long year and hard one for our family with my daughter’s car accident and my own recovery. During the vacation we took a day trip to see rural life in the Dominican Republic - beautiful. Part of the day was visiting a cocoa/coffee family farm with the cutest most welcoming kids. When I came upon the famous cacao pods emerging so whimsically from the trees, I had an epiphany of sorts. Seeing them for the first time made my eyes tear up…
My nine years of talking about and presenting and promoting fair trade chocolate with CRS all merged into that moment - how beautiful, tasty, simple and how transformative this little agricultural wonder is for so many…how it can also be a product of slavery, repression and injustice as well. The yin and yang of life, the dark and the light…so to speak. All from this interesting and tasty pod. I tasted and touched and smelled the fruit and enjoyed some fresh hot cocoa with cinnamon they offered us.
To all my fair trade enthusiasts, keep up the great work…your hands, the farmer/worker hands, the people of faith who purchase and consume these products, we are all in this messy world together. Faith and hard, sweaty farm work and service and consumption and transformation, they all mean something as they come together through fair trade. Solidarity does transform this world.
Many blessings this New Year as we do our part to live the Gospel and love God’s world and people.
Thank you for all you do.
I have non-profit work experience in the fair trade industry. I am seeking a way to start up a fair trade store or work for one in the Va Beach Va area.
my work experience includes Ten Thousand Villages and Go Fish Clothing & Jewelry.
Any advise? I am currently unemployed.
Thanks. Elizabeth
Hi Elizabeth,
Your first stop should be the Fair Trade Federation - check out their job board, then give their materials a read through. They work with fair trade stores throughout the US, and can likely link you to folks who have started their own fair trade businesses.
http://www.fairtradefederation.org/fair-trade-job-board/
In the interim, also check out the Virginia Aquarium - their gift shop carries multiple fair trade products!
Good luck,
Courtney