Author Archive

Greetings again from Central America. I just posted a note about four coffee cooperatives in Guatemala that are taking coffee roasting into their own hands, and mentioned that the primary market for their roasted coffee will be domestic, with exports as a possibility in the future. I thought a bit more context — [...]

Read the entry: Fair Trade Field Notes: Green v. Roasted? →

Greetings from Guatemala. My name is Michael, and I used to work on the CRS Fair Trade Program with Jackie. In September I reluctantly gave up working on Fair Trade full time and began working as the CRS Regional Technical Advisor for Sustainable Livelihoods in Latin America and the Caribbean (a mouthful, I [...]

Read the entry: Fair Trade Field Notes: Guatemala →

Katy and I are in Nicaragua with a variety of coffee partners who belong to Cooperative Coffees. The event will combine field visits to various coffee cooperatives in the Matagalpa region, where CRS works with the CECOSEMAC cooperative, workshops on pressing issues and meetings involving many of the different stakeholders in the Fair [...]

Read the entry: Updates from the Coffeelands →

Tom is one of our colleagues at CRS Headquarters here in Baltimore who just returned to the United States after many years overseas, including four years in South Africa, where he got hooked on rooibos.  One day Tom came to my cube to ask why we only promoted Fair Trade coffee and not Fair Trade teas.  He [...]

Read the entry: Rooibos, Anyone? →

 
 
 
 
Great news!  Equal Exchange will be joining our Coffee Program on October 1! 
For those of you who don’t know “EE,” it is our pleasure to help acquaint you.  EE is a:

Worker-owned cooperative.
Fair Trade pioneer.  The coop was established in 1986 when few people in the United States were talking about Fair Trade, developed an innovative  Interfaith Program that partners [...]

Read the entry: Equal Exchange to Join Coffee Program! →

Today is a big day for us: the first day of our carbon-neutral lives!  We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Carbon Fund to offset the carbon emissions generated by mailing out all the Fair Trade educational resources you order through our website. 
Every year, thousands of envelopes and boxes filled with Fair [...]

Read the entry: CRS Fair Trade Goes Carbon-Neutral! →

Hey, there!  Just a quick note to let you know that we have created two new resources to help you spread the word about Fair Trade in your community. 
The first one, a 16-page publication titled “Trading on our values,” explains the Fair Trade concept, profiles all four CRS Fair Trade Programs (crafts, coffee, chocolate and [...]

Read the entry: New Resources Available Now →

More than 2 billion reasons to act now.
A few years ago, after I joined CRS but before I started working with the Fair Trade Program, I was involved in an event at Loyola College here in Baltimore focused on world hunger.  In preparing comments for the event, I wrote that “Hunger is an intrinsic and instrumental evil.” 
I [...]

Read the entry: It Is Hard to Work When You Are Hungry →

The View from Peru: Beneath the “Fair Tradar”
Fair Trade is extra-ordinary because it enables ordinary people like us to have a direct impact on the lives of families all around the world through the consumer choices we make every day.  But the Fair Trade consumer opportunities that are available to us are limited, and represent only [...]

Read the entry: All in the (Camel) Family →

The View from Peru: Fair Trade at K’Antu!
Hola!  I am writing from Lima, the capital of Peru.  After leaving Uruguay last week, I came here to support my colleagues in our Peru program as they develop a strategic plan for their economic justice programming for the next few years.  I am part of a team [...]

Read the entry: Fair Trade in Peru! →