Fair Trade San Antonio-Style

And the Fair Trade travels continue! Just because World Fair Trade Day is over doesn’t mean the fun has to end. Last weekend our CRS Southwest office hosted a Fair Trade training in their hometown of San Antonio and invited me down to help out. We were so fortunate to be hosted by the San Fernando Cathedral. Obviously the Cathedral itself is reason enough to make it a “must see” on anyone’s visit to San Antonio, but we were also fortunate to have Dora Ramos as a part of our group. Dora runs the Cathedral’s gift shop and holds a Work of Human Hands Sale twice a year. Dora’s practice is that she never returns an item that doesn’t sell at the sale; she just moves it into the gift shop. And believe me, if the amount of purchases I made while in the gift shop is any indication of Dora’s ability as a saleswoman, those items don’t stay around long!

 

Another special guest among our group was Chad Crotty of Earth Friendly Coffees. Earth Friendly is a partner of the CRS Fair Trade Coffee project and Dora sells Earth Friendly coffee in the Cathedral Gift Shop. Chad was kind enough to join us from his home in Denver to share the story of Earth Friendly Coffees and root all our Fair Trade discussions in the real life experiences of a fully committed Fair Trade coffee company. Earth Friendly founder and owner, Diane Hughes started the company after hearing about the unfair prices and seeing harsh conditions coffee farmers have to live with during a trip to Chiapas. I think that most of us taking part in the training were able to identify with the frustration of seeing injustice and feeling the determination to take action.

 

Thanks to all that participated in the training and to our hosts!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 and is filed under Fair Trade . You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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