Traveling South for the King Holiday

A few years back I managed an AmeriCorps program and remember that the national service motto for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday was “Make it a day ON not a day off.” The idea was to encourage folks to do volunteer work in honor of Dr. King’s legacy instead of just hanging out on a three day weekend. Well, I wasn’t working on the MLK holiday itself, but I did spend this past weekend in southern Georgia, where much civil rights history was made.

My colleague Simone Blanchard in the CRS-Southeast office arranged for Tripp Pomeroy and his crew at Cafe Campesino to host a Fair Trade training over the long weekend. About two dozen CRS staff and constituents headed to the Koinonia community, home of the Cotton Patch Gospel and birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, to learn what Fair Trade is and how to bring it home to places of worship throughout Georgia and Florida. One participant reflected that the most important part of the time was, “Learning how the relationships created within the system of Fair Trade encourage us to live our faith to provide hope [and to] ‘do unto others.’”

For me, there were several moments of significance leading up to and during the training. As I drove down to Americus, Georgia, the weather was cold and overcast, making the pecan trees and cotton fields seem a bit mournful, creating a solemn mood appropriate for contemplating the loss of a leader such as Dr. King. The warm greetings of the hosts at Koinonia, though, quickly warmed my heart as participants claimed spots in a simple dormitory chattering about what to expect from the weekend. The answer was: fun, information, and lots of southern hospitality.

Tripp, his wife, Marisol, and their colleague, Maty, treated us to a pizza dinner before giving us a tour of the Cafe Campesino coffee facility, which roasts about 95,000 pounds of Fair Trade beans a year! I helped bag a few pounds of coffee early Saturday morning, and I can tell you…95,000 pounds is a LOT of java justice! Working side-by-side with partners is always a fun and rewarding experience for me, because I get a view of what life and business is like for companies fully committed to Fair Trade. Fair Trade isn’t necessarily the fastest, most glamorous, or most lucrative business model, but the sense of satisfaction, the pride in promoting socially responsible practices, and the hope for the future, reminds me why I do the work I do. (Here’s a photo of Tripp, taken by Michelle Frankfurter, during a visit with a CRS-supported farmer in Nicaragua, who is wearing the baseball cap.)

Another reminder of why I promote Fair Trade, especially appropriate during the King holiday weekend, was that it brings diverse people together in a variety of different ways. At this training, we had participants of the Methodist, Episcopal and Quaker (that’s me!) faiths in attendance. An interfaith version of the Just Faith spiritual formation group had just convened in the Savannah area and several Just Faithers decided to attend the training.

I also got a kick out of buying Fair Trade pecan “bark” in the Koinonia gift shop. This homemade candy–which reminded me of peanut brittle-features Georgia’s own pecans wrapped up in Fair Trade chocolate made from cocoa beans from West Africa. Throughout our time in Americus those of us gathered learned that Fair Trade products are about so much more than taste or price, but really about the people who produce our food and handcrafts. Those producers form right relationships to the consumers who purchase and use the items in the Fair Trade marketplace.

As I traveled back north, I reflected on the relationships I had strengthened or created over the short course of a weekend. And I carried back some pecan bark as a souvenir. Candy might sound like a trivial item, but I believe a product created by farmers in West Africa and farmers in the south of Georgia, and distributed by an organization committed to justice, is a a tangible example of one way we can realize Dr. King’s dream.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 and is filed under Chocolate, Coffee, Events, Fair Trade, crafts . You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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