Trade As One

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.

Laura Piper is one of our summer interns, helping Trade as One out with project management, graphic design and marketing.

When people typically think of organizations doing “good,” what most often comes to mind are charities, churches, non-profits, and philanthropists. In conversations with friends and family recently, I’ve been amazed by how hard it is for us to break out of this idea that if you want to do good and make a difference in the world, you need to work for a non-profit. And if you want to be successful and make money, you should work for a for-profit business. It’s almost as if we’ve made some a simple formula out of it:

Non-profits = Do good and impart change.
For-profits = Simply make a profit.

But in my mind, these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. While I have no doubt that non-profits and churches are doing immense amounts of good in the world, and I am so thankful for all that they do, I am continually inspired by companies that are breaking this separation and seeking to not only make a profit, but to do “good” at the very same time.

This idea is exactly what drew me to the mission behind Trade as One: “To use sustainable business to break cycles of poverty and dependency in the developing world.” And it is also what got me excited about interning with them this summer (…along with the hope of keeping busy and making a difference with my time, while I search for a full-time job).

I’m about six weeks into my internship and there is no doubt that the experience has been a great one! Not only am I learning about the direct impact of our purchases on those living in the developing world, but I’m excited to be part of some of the numerous projects in the works at Trade as One, each with the goal of helping to tell the stories of lives being changed and hope being restored through your simple and ongoing decisions to purchase fair trade.

We’ve begun our first round of interviews with our summer internship applicants, and we’re all pretty excited to get started. We never seem to suffer from a lack of things to do, so it will be great to get some interns in here to help.
So far the quality of the applicants has been superb, and the people we’re interviewing are both talented and passionate. And in light of their many talents, we’re not going to be giving them boring jobs (no one will be making copies or making coffee runs). We’ve got significant projects that will go a long way towards our success this year, and we’re going to trust our interns to run point.
Should be an amazing summer, as our team grows (albeit temporarily) in size and skills. Now if we could only get some A/C in here….