One World Shop
Laura Potter-Sadowski, Manager
www.oneworldshopcle.org
440-333-7709
We are a non-profit organization that operates through a fair trade store front. We work to promote our values and mission of fair trade in the community and connect our supporters to the artisans and their talents. We sell anything and everything from coffee, tea & chocolate to personal accessories, jewelry, home decor, wedding gifts, holiday merchandise & so much more!
What inspired you to get started in Fair Trade?
The ability to empower others to improve not only their own lives but their family members & their communities as a whole through a sustainable business concept.
What is your favorite thing about Fair Trade?
Knowing that every day people are lifting themselves out of poverty through fair trade opportunities, specifically the opportunities given to women who might not otherwise have them.
What can individuals do to promote fair trade beyond the label?
Tell their friends! The only way to build up our community is to share our knowledge with others!
What else should we know about your or your product or both?
We are 39 years young and the only nonprofit fair trade store in Northeast Ohio!
Vendor Profile: Threads Worldwide
Threads Worldwide
Rachel & Rebecca Jewell
www.ThreadsWorldwide.com/Rachel Jewell
440-477-8145
Threads provides handmade jewelry and accessories from 10 artisan groups in 8 different countries for sale in your home or mine. I run my business from my home which allows me to set my own hours and provide personalized service to individuals and groups. My favorite thing to do is help organize fair trade jewelry fundraisers for non-profit groups.
What inspired you to get started in Fair Trade?
When a friend introduced me to fair trade jewelry, I was not a jewelry wearer. The stories of the women who make Threads products converted me. I cannot turn my back on how employing women and educating daughters is changing the world. At Threads, we want everyone to thrive.
What is your favorite thing about Fair Trade?
I truly believe that fair trade is changing the world on bracelet, banana, coffee, chocolate, etc at a time. Fair Trade is a system of business that I am proud to be a part of and to promote.
What can individuals do to promote fair trade beyond the label?
As a consumer, it is important to know not only where your purchases are produced but also what conditions they are produced under. The fair trade movement is expanding as consumers demand environmental stewardship, quality work conditions and fair wages for producers, and high quality products. Look for the fair trade label but go beyond that and ask questions about worker conditions.
What else should we know about your or your product or both?
I think it is important to spread the fair trade story as often as possible. Threads is piloting a program in the United States to having mothers & daughters working together to educate peers and sell fair trade jewelry. Please stop by my table at the Teach-in and Expo to learn about how you can help me, help our artisan partners, and participate more fully in the fair trade movement.
Vendor Profile: World Peaces
World Peaces
Connie De Jong
www.worldpeaces.com
614-596-1303
World Peaces features collaborative work across countries and between artisan groups the create jewelry, accessories and home decor. We work primarily in Africa with natural and recycled materials.
What inspired you to get started in Fair Trade?
I have been lucky to be involved in Fair Trade since I began traveling to the developing world in college and first worked for a Fair Trade organization directly after graduation, before serving in the Peace Corps. It has been, and continues to be, a central part of my life’s work.
What is your favorite thing about Fair Trade?
Building community and understanding among people of different cultures.
What can individuals do to promote fair trade beyond the label?
I believe we need to connect with one another and build peace through empathy and understanding. Working to become open and accepting is part of the Fair Trade promise.
What else should we know about your or your product or both?
Each piece is lovingly made and we hope you will learn about countries you may have never known about before, like Lesotho and Zambia.
Event Sponsor
Revy Fair Trade
Ron Ober
www.revydirect.com
216-765-8117
Revy Fair Trade offers a wide variety of accessories exclusively from El Salvador. Our accessories are from either recycled or natural materials. Much of our product line is made from recycled inner-tubes picked up by the roadside in El Salvador. Other items are hand tie-dyed from organically grown indigo.
What inspired you to get started in Fair Trade?
We feel that we hit the jackpot by being born in America. Most of the world is not that lucky. We feel that we have an obligation to give back to those who are not as fortunate as us.
What is your favorite thing about Fair Trade?
Our favorite thing is the people. This includes the artisans in El Salvador and those in the fair trade movement here in the United States.
What can individuals do to promote fair trade beyond the label?
Fair trade is about justice. We need to go beyond products and look for ways to create a more equal and just world everywhere.
What else should we know about your or your product or both?
We are members of the Fair Trade Federation, and active in the Ohio Fair Trade Network including participating as volunteers for the Ohio Fair Trade Teach-In & Expo. Our efforts go beyond just selling products. We promote the message wherever we can.
Vendor Profile: Global Gifts
Global Gifts
Amy Phillips-Gary
www.globalgiftsft.com
614-621-1744
We are a retail marketplace for Fair Trade goods from over 40 different countries, selling a variety of certified Fair Trade goods: home decor, jewelry, apparel, woolens, kids’ items, and more.
What inspired you to get started in Fair Trade?
Global Gifts supports sustainable economic opportunities to help people (and their families) improve their lives.
What is your favorite thing about Fair Trade?
We LOVE that Fair Trade goods are innovative, unique, and create a positive ripple effect!
What can individuals do to promote fair trade beyond the label?
Do what you can to find out where the items you buy came from, who made them, and strive to purchase items that are fair and ethical.
What else should we know about your or your product or both?
Global Gifts is a small nonprofit regional organization with shops in Indiana and Ohio, as well as an online webstore.
Vendor Profile: Grain of Rice Project
What makes your shop special?
We personally know all of our artisans and their families. We gather with them each day in our workshop and collaborate together on designs. Many of their children are part of our after school outreach program.
What kinds of product/information do you provide? fair trade jewelry, bags, accessories, and holiday gifts from Kenya
What inspired you to get started in Fair Trade?
After spending time living in Kenya, Amy (the founder), wanted to provide a sustainable income centered around the artisans’ talents.
What is your favorite thing about Fair Trade?
We love that each piece empowers and tells a story.
What can individuals do to promote fair trade beyond the label?
Tell others about fair trade. Reach out to your social clubs, church groups, and friends to tell them why fair trade is important.
What else should we know about your or your product or both?
Take a look at the tag on each product to read the personal story about the man or woman who made your piece.
Vendor Profile: Storehouse Tea Company
Storehouse Tea Company
Paula Hershman
www.storehousetea.com
216-406-9139
The Storehouse Tea Company is a social enterprise that manufactures Certified Organic Fair Trade Loose leaf teas. Storehouse Tea is located in the Clark/ Fulton neighborhood of Cleveland. We hand blend 50 plus Organic Fair Trade teas and ingredients from all over the world. We employ internationals, newcomers to Cleveland to help us with our tea production work. We hope to improve people’s life chances, and support the community we are located in. We also support Fair Trade and provide an excellent organic healthy product. When social enterprise, profits society profits.
What inspired you to get started in Fair Trade?
It was a no-brainer for me, being a woman owned company. The majority of tea pickers around the world are women. Supporting them was an easy decision.
What is your favorite thing about Fair Trade?
Our favorite thing about Fair Trade is that we know that the extra money that we pay per pound of tea goes back to the women who carefully hand pick our tea leaves. Money also goes back to the small communities where these people have lived all their lives. All of the tea garden’s that we buy from are also Certified Organic which means the owners are responsible, they care about how their tea leaves are grown and take care of their workers. Happy workers = excellent tea leaves! That is what we are all about creating an excellent product that is all around doing good for producers, employees and end users.
What can individuals do to promote fair trade beyond the label?
First, there needs to be education about Fair Trade. Owners of products or brand holders need to tell the story behind their product with photos and interest. Stores need to provide customers with reliable Fair Trade options.
What else should we know about your or your product or both?
We are not an actual tea house but a manufacture of high quality Organic Fair Trade teas. We mostly wholesale our line of teas to stores and specialty shops and private label tea for other businesses who want to support Organic and Fair Trade. If you know of any wholesale opportunities we would be happy to have the referrals.
Fair Trade Pillar #4: Pay Promptly and Fairly
Most of us can usually come up with a few dollars for lunch or even stepping out. We take it for granted that loose change can always be found. Of course, there are exceptions even in this country. There are way too many people living on the margins in the United States.
In the global south, this is not the exception but quite often the rule. Money is a scarce commodity to be used for essential things like food and shelter. Buying a sandwich for lunch is a luxury. Stepping out is unheard of.
Revy learned very early with our fair trade business the importance of this. We always asked our artisans to keep a sample so that they could make the same product when we re-ordered. Fat chance. The sample was made, and then sold in a local market. We now have to supply photos with our orders and in some instances send a sample from our inventory.
Naturally, if an artisan can’t afford to keep a sample in inventory, they certainly can’t afford to buy raw material for an order. This is one reason that members of the Fair Trade Federation like ourselves send a 50% deposit with each order. It is a great income generator for PNC Bank with these extra wire transfers, but it’s the only way to do business according to the principles to which we subscribe.
In some instances, we supply the raw material ourselves. Earring wires must be stainless steel with an absolute minimum of nickel content and we supply them. In this case, the artisan has zero material costs since the earring itself is usually made from a seed or gourd. Regardless, we still advance 50% to them.
In other instances, the material cost is minimal. Our line of accessories from recycled inner-tubes uses scrap as the main component. Only a small amount is needed for linings, zippers, etc. Again, we advance 50%.
There is an added bonus to this since our payments for most products are mainly compensation for labor. This has a much greater impact than when the artisan needs to acquire material. The balance is always paid upon shipment.
Compare this with the “free trade” model where the artisan must wait until the product is shipped to get paid. Sometimes, payment can be months or never at all. This is what we mean by “fair.”
Ron and Mary Ober
Revy Fair Trade
The Obers are the founders and owners of Revy Fair Trade, a Cleveland based fair trade wholesale business that imports from fair trade cooperatives in El Salvador. Revy means revitalization. Their emphasis is both on recycling and natural materials. The product line consists of: Jewelry created from clay, bamboo, coconut shells and a variety of seeds.
Handbags dyed with indigo, teak, tree moss and other organic materials.
Recycled materials including plastic bags, glass, used tires and leather scraps.
Check them out at revydirect.com
School Solidarity
These days most teenagers are consumed with grades, social status, the future, and preparing for college. We often don’t find time to stop and reflect – “smell the roses”- along the way. It is an inspiring moment when you can see the spark in your peers’ eyes when they find what they are passionate about. Whether it is a form of art or a social justice matter, once someone finds a calling they often gain a greater sense of self-worth. I have seen that spark ignite in my friends and classmates who have gotten involved with our Fair Trade club. And it’s not just because we sell coffee.
We often hear about “peer pressure” and how it relates to teenagers today. Usually, the term has a negative connotation, but that is not always the case. Once a month at Walsh Jesuit we have fair trade refreshments for sale, to raise awareness about opportunities to make a fair trade choice. In this way we “pressure” our peers to think about where their food and clothing comes from and who makes it.
Too often we see the product instead of what happened for the thing to be in front of us. According to dosomething.org, “In developing countries, an estimated 168 million children ages 5-14 are forced to work.” That is 168 million 1 st -9 th graders working in poor conditions for an unfair wage. We are all human and the color of our skin or where we are from should not determine our paycheck or working conditions. Some believe that buying these products is acceptable, justifying their actions by thinking that they are giving these workers some sort of income. Any time we exploit people’s poverty, we are feeding an unstable system. Fredrick Douglas describes this well when he said “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
Encourage your peers to make conscious decisions and go fair trade! Whether it be with the clothes they wear, the coffee they buy, or the food they purchase, the gratification that is felt knowing they have made a difference no matter how small is addictive.
Chloe Gunther is a student a Walsh Jesuit High School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Chloe, thanks for continuing to “peer pressure” folks to spread more love and justice! Meet Walsh Jesuit students at the Ohio Fair Trade Teach-In and EXPO.
Fair Trade Pillar #3: Building Producer Capacity
“Fair Trade is a means to develop producers’ independence. Members maintain long-term relationships based on solidarity, trust, and mutual respect, so that producers can improve their skills and their access to markets. Members help producers to build capacity through proactive communication, financial and technical assistance, market information, and dialogue. They seek to share lessons learned, to spread best practices, and to strengthen the connections between communities, including among producer groups.”
–Fair Trade Federation
It’s a common misconception that fair trade is simply the act of paying a decent price for a product; nothing more than a producer being able to walk away having made $2.20 for a pound of coffee instead of $1.00. This is an incomplete picture, and one that mis-characterizes the true nature of the authentic fair trade movement. A fair price is a significant part of the equation, but it is not everything, and it is not nearly enough. There is much more happening on the ground at the producer level, a key example of which is the building of producer capacity.
Fair trade was developed to give marginalized farmers and artisans market access, and therefore literally put more dollars in their pockets. However, this alternative manner of trade is meant to be mutually beneficial. Consumers pay a higher price; producers provide a quality product. But producers must have the know-how and means to do so. They must have the organizational ability, infrastructure, capital, and training tools necessary to keep building upon and improving their means of production, in order to ensure their long-term viability in the market. This is what we call capacity.
Capacity-building comes in many forms: pre-harvest finance, technical assistance, market research, loans for purchasing new equipment, and quality control training, to name a few. Each manner of capacity-building is made possible through long-term committed partnerships across national borders, and is meant to increase producer autonomy at the grassroots level – at the very beginning of the supply chain. We see examples of this with producer groups world-wide, such as this one from Equal Exchange cacao partner, Oro Verde Cooperative, of Peru:
“Oro Verde is currently working hard to identify high quality, productive and disease-resistant cacao trees to build up an elite tree program allowing them to provide their farmers with improved varieties for the future. This includes a reforestation project that involves planting two million trees to help the co-op achieve a carbon footprint of zero.”
— EqualExchange.coop
Helping build capacity is not charity, but rather a way to foster independence and increase producer control over the very supply chains on which they rely for survival. It’s the sharing of tools and knowledge that will bring more economic activity to those who have been marginalized by conventional trade. It is insurance against future challenges, and is what enables producers to hold their own in a system rigged against them. Capacity-building is a fundamental pillar of the fair trade model, without which you don’t have genuine fair trade.
Peace,
Rachel
Rachel Dana, is a worker-owner at Equal Exchange. After graduating from Earlham College in Indiana, Rachel spent some time in Mexico. She is now based in Cleveland, Ohio with another worker-owner and several part time staffers who run the Northeast Ohio DSD program. Cleveland is also home to one of the exclusive Equal Exchange Espresso Bars, a 100% fair trade coffee cafe, dedicated to the principles of fair trade.
check out EqualExchange.coop