Fall in Love with Fair Trade Certified
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Hey, if you’re already planning to buy any chocolate, flowers, or wine for Valentines Day, consider buying Fair Trade. Check out this note we got from TransFair USA below.
-Margaret McDonnell, ONE NGO Partnership Coordinator
This Valentine’s Day, it is easier than ever to show someone you care with gifts that benefit farming communities around the world. Fair Trade Certified flowers, chocolate and now wine are available in retailers nationwide and online.
Fair Trade Certified flowers are already helping ensure that flower workers like Nancy Segovia of Agrogandera, a flower plantation in southern Ecuador, receive fair wages, a safe work environment, paid vacation, maternity and sick leave and access to child care.
Fair Trade Certified cocoa is helping the farmers of the Kavokiva cooperative in the Ivory Coast to fund scholarships and school supplies for members children, build a healthcare center and establish a women’s literacy program.
Fair Trade Certified wine is helping wine producers like Marie Malan to move from her previous position as a domestic servant to the esteemed position of Farm Manager at Stellar Organics, an award winning organic vineyard in South Africa.
By choosing Fair Trade Certified products you are directly supporting a better life for farming families through fair prices and just labor conditions, direct trade, community development and environmentally sustainable farming practices.
This Valentine’s Day, pledge to make all of your purchases Fair Trade Certified and encourage your family and friends to do the same. As a special bonus, our friends at 1-800-Flowers are offering 15% off your next purchase of a Fair Trade Certified bouquet to everyone who takes the pledge. Forward this message to family and friends and they can receive the gift too. To take the Fair Trade Valentine’s Day pledge and forward a beautiful Valentine’s Day eCard to your loved ones, click here.
To find out more about where you can find Fair Trade Certified flowers, chocolate and wine in stores and online please visit our beautiful “Fall in Love with Fair Trade” website.
Thank you and Happy Valentine’s Day!
-James Guzzi, TransFair USA
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The ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with frequent contributions from volunteers, members and partner organizations.
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February 12, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Debbie Kreuser Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Thanks Margaret for this post. Flowers and chocolates that have been produced in an atmosphere of fairness & respect for the maker ends up with a product that one can give feel good about when giving it to a loved one.
I would really encourage the readers of the ONE Blog to read up some more on the horror which lies in your chocolate bar – if it is not a Fair Trade product. The exploitation of children on cacao-producing plantations, many of them AIDS orphans to produce a economic profit for the plantation owners & the chocolate companies is one of the most obscene abuses of children and labor rights in the world today.
Please visit this website to learn more about Fair Trade & Labor Rights issues:
http://www.laborrights.org/
And have a wonderful & Fair Trade Valentine’s Day!
ALWAYS FOREVER, ONE – debbie
February 21, 2009 at 6:57 am
Interesting. I guess there’s the answer to the tootsie roll question(the one previously asked about whether or not it was the “official One.org candy” because if so, someone here wanted to buy some and put them up at their next booth/table…). One of the ingredients in the tootsie roll is cocoa. It’s probably not a fair trade product and thusly should not be put on tables for bribery. No more One.org pictures featureing tootsie rolls on the tables then?
February 21, 2009 at 6:58 am
….ouch.