Trade As One

These past couple of months have been busy here at Trade as One! Along with planning for our busy fall event season, ordering lots of new products, and updating our website, we’ve been hard at work compiling dates, photos, and stories from our producers. We’ve used this information to create the Trade as One 2010 Calendar. The calendar will feature stories and photos of artisans and farmers from around the world who’s lives have been changed through Fair Trade and the purchases you make with Trade as One.

As a little ‘teaser’ of what’s to come in the calendar, here’s a preview story of Maman Nafissetou, one of the makers of our Fair Trade body care products from Alaffia: 

Maman Nafissetou joined the Alaffia cooperative in May 2003. She is always smiling, as she loves her work and takes pride in her role of overseeing the crystallizing process of turning oil into shea butter. Her salary allows her access to health care for her family, and she is now able to save a quarter of her salary each month, something that would have never been possible before joining Alaffia. With her savings she has been able to start several small businesses for her daughters. “I do not wish to ever leave the cooperative, because the Alaffia cooperative is an initiative that supports the poor like me.”

Look for the Trade as One 2010 Calendar on sale this fall at our events and online. Not only is this a great opportunity for you to have a daily reminder on your wall of the lives you change with every purchase from Trade as One, but it makes for a great gift and a unique way to share your passion for Fair Trade with family and friends.

You may have already noticed, but we’ve got some brand new teas here at Trade as One. We’ve partnered with Choice Teas to bring you 4 new flavors of organic, fair trade teas. We’ve got Rooibos and Vanilla, Morrocan Mint Green, Earl Grey with Lavender, and Chamomile Spearmint. These tasty teas come with years of experience in both the organic and fair trade markets, as Choice Teas have led the way in both spheres for some time. We’ve already sampled these teas at a few events, and they’ve been a big hit. They’re great as gifts, especially when you pair them with a mug or a good book.

Now if you’re like us, you might be wondering, what is Rooibos anyway? First, we’ll tackle step one: pronunciation. It’s deceiving, but it’s actually pronounced like “roy-bos.” All together now: “roy-bos.”

Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can move on to specifics. Our friends at Choice Teas got into all kinds of detail on their blog. Here’s an excerpt:

The name “rooibos” is Afrikaans for ‘red bush,’ referring to the signature red color of the dried leaves of the Aspalathus linearis plant. It’s grown solely in the Cedarburg Mountains of South Africa and has been enjoyed there for centuries. It’s believed…

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We’re hard at work and getting excited for tomorrow night’s event with Shepherd of the Hills: Slavery No More. This free event at their Porter Ranch Campus will showcase a 30-minute documentary, followed by a panel discussion on the issues of slavery and human trafficking. The night will also provide opportunities for attendees to explore different ways to get involved, including purchasing Trade as One products made by our partners who work directly with women who have been rescued out of the bonds of slavery and oppression. We have a couple of awesome volunteers helping us out and are excited to have a presence alongside other groups also taking a stand against the issues of slavery and human trafficking. If you’re in the area, stop on by!

For more information: Slavery No More

Josh Catron is one of our summer interns and a recent Stanford grad.

My name is Josh Catron and I spent the summer working as an intern with Trade as One. After my six weeks with Trade as One I can truly say I enjoyed the experience. From Tuesday BBQ lunches to long days doing inventory, I had a great time working with everyone on the Trade as One team.

But the most rewarding part of my internship was being able to hear the stories of how the livelihoods of people all over the world are improving because of Fair Trade principles. The focus of my internship with a marketing project designed to help customers understand the positive impact they are making in the lives of workers around the world when they purchase our products. This opportunity allowed me to personally talk with representatives from each of our producers. And while each producer had a different story to tell, they all spoke of the same theme: Fair Trade has brought economic empowerment, social dignity, and a better way of life to hard working people across the globe. I feel blessed to have had this experience and been able to be a part of a company who is based on these principles.

The beautiful jewelry of NightLight tells stories of lives rebuilt and hope restored. Kay is one of these lives.

Kay was five months pregnant when her mamasan brought her to NightLight for assistance. No longer able to work in the bar, she had nowhere to go. Kay moved into the shelter and started working in NightLight’s jewelry business. Four months later Kay’s beautiful baby girl was born, and while most women leave their children with grandparents to find work, NightLight’s child care center provided a way for Kay to raise her daughter while she continued to work. Kay’s heart is full of joy and she has become one of NightLight’s primary leaders for morning worship before the day’s jewelry production begins.

Nightlight was launched in 2005 to provide a sustainable path out of poverty and sexual abuse for Bangkok’s young women. After observing the situation around them, the founders of NightLight set a goal to combat the sexual exploitation of women and children in the Nana/Sukhumvit area of Bangkok, an area rife with sexual abuse, trafficking, and extreme poverty.

Through life-on-life ministry NightLight seeks to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of women in prostitution, their children, and those children brought illegally into Thailand to financially support their families by selling items in the bars, often through sexual exploitation. By building relationships, along with providing a center that offers emergency aid, educational and employment opportunity, emergency child care, language tutoring, literacy training, biblical teaching and healing for their community, NightLight is truly bringing light into the darkness as they impact the lives of the women and children in Bangkok who have escaped the horrors of the sex industry.

Trade as One is proud to partner with NightLight and offer these brave women a chance to connect with women in America who would love nothing more than for the jewelry they wear to be an expression of freedom and justice.