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My Guatemalan Trip–I Learn To Make A “Princesa” Beaded Necklace
The best-selling product in my store also happens to be my personal favorite, the “Princesa” line of hand-beaded necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. So I was thrilled to visit the wonderful group of...
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NYC First Graders Take Action on Fair Trade & Child Labor
Late last spring, an email crossed my desk that started with this sentence: “We have a class of six and seven year olds who are trying to make a difference in this world.” It was from a parent at The...
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“A Month We Should Not Need”
We like to think of January as the month of new beginnings, a month to erase the past year’s troubles and focus on fresh starts. But for millions of women, men, and children a fresh start is beyond...
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Why is a Fair Trade Retailer Writing About Earth Day?
First published in 2014, it's a quick and easy intro to how and why Earth Day began and its relevance to fair trade.
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The Green Economy, Fair Trade, and Women-Earth Day 2014
Women and the Green Economy (WAGE) is the Earth Day Network’s initiative to bring more women into the decision-making process about our environment. While the focus of WAGE is to increase leadership...
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Fair Trade Rethinks Earth’s Baggage
Another in a series about fair trade and the environment in celebration of Earth Day. Did you know that: • About 1 million plastic bags are used every minute. • A single plastic bag can take up to...
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Fair Trade Clothing: The Fast Fashion Antidote–Earth Day 2014
Fast fashion–the burgeoning trend of quickly and cheaply moving clothing from the catwalk to consumer to capitalize on current fashion trends. Companies using this approach promote it as fast, low...
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How a yen for travel launched a fair trade business.
Another story in a series about the inspiring fair trade businesswomen who supply our beautiful products. Giovanna Mantilla likes to travel. She and her mother took off about 7 years ago on an...
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What’s Fair Trade Got To Do With World Elephant Day?
Their numbers were once as large as they are: in 1979, there were about 1.3 million African elephants. By 1989, the population had dropped to half that. Even though an international ban that same...
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What “Create Opportunity” means in the fair trade world: Fair Trade...
What "Create Opportunity" means in the fair trade world.
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Transparency and Accountability: Fair Trade Principle #2
Honesty and integrity are key in all aspects of the fair trade supply chain.
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The Dancer and the Tagua Nut
While answering a shopper’s questions at a recent sales event, I noticed a woman debating whether to buy a lovely tagua necklace. She’d pick it up and look it over, put it down, look at something...
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The Silent Epidemic–Child Trafficking
The Washington Post reported this morning that a woman in New York is accused of taking two South Korean children into her home and using them as slave labor for the last six years. A brother and...
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How Fair Trade Fights Human Trafficking
January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month Human trafficking is the second largest illegal trade in the world, second only to drugs. Estimates of how much it’s worth range from $32 billion to $150...
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Building Relationships=Building Capacity: Fair Trade Principle #3
When you hear the term build capacity, you probably think about companies building new factories to increase production. In the fair trade world, building capacity encompasses a completely different...
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What I do all day.
I was talking with some friends recently and they asked me what I’d been up to lately. “I’m super busy with the business,” I said. That prompted them to ask, “Well, what do you do all day?” When I...
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8 Things That Can Happen When You Buy Fair Trade
Whether you do so consciously or not, when you purchase a fair trade product you’re making a statement that the poor should get to participate fully in and benefit from global trade. But if you want to...
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How I Became A Fair Trade Federation Member
When you visit my web site, do you ever notice the logo on the left? You might pass over it without much thought and move on to the joy of shopping. But behind that logo is a guarantee that my business...
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Promoting Fair Trade-Principle #4
Do you ever wonder what it means if something is fair trade? That’s the question the fourth fair trade principle was created to answer. Any business that sells fair trade products, whether food,...
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