This year’s Fair Trade Campaigns National Conference held in Chicago, IL was Fair Trade Campaign’s 2nd annual national conference. Champlain students have attended both this year’s and last year’s conferences, and I personally attended both. My name is Ariel Simpson and I am a Sophomore Environmental Studies & Policy major working for the Center for Service & Sustainability as a Student Outreach Liaison. At the 2019 conference I was accompanied by Zoe Caron and Erika LaTeer, both Senior Environmental Policy majors at Champlain, working for the Center for Service & Sustainability as Eco-Rep leaders and coordinators. Our mission as student leaders is to spread and expand knowledge of sustainability, climate change, and Fair Trade on campus through continued personal learning, campus events, and community outreach.

The Fair Trade Campaigns National Conference brings together members of the Fair Trade movement from all around the country and the world. It is a chance to hear what folks are doing in their small church communities, or on the larger scale, for their 70,000 student universities, or even a larger scale of Fair Trade cities. With diverse backgrounds and missions as Fair Trade advocates, this conference displays the true depth of what Fair Trade can mean, do, and where it can be found. I began my advocacy of Fair Trade through sustainability work, however, some began looking at unequal workers pay, or even from a human rights perspective.

Some inspiring groups:

We heard from representatives of RefuShe in Nairobi who provide safety and education to girls and young women. RefuShe provides safehouses, vocational training and therapy to these women in order to help them land on their feet and find skills to use in the real world. It is organizations like this that truly inspire and lead the Fair Trade movement with forward thought. On a more local scale (to Chicago), we heard from Aspire CoffeeWorks. This is a Fair Trade coffee brand which provides work for developmentally disabled adults and gives proceeds to people with developmental disabilities. The founder of Fair Trade USA spoke and left the audience with a few key ideas: “Trade, not aid” –farmers don’t need our aid, they just need a fair price. In this way, they can go from victims of globalization, to effective competitors within the global economy. Another is that sustainability can drive profit. Lastly, he mentioned that Republicans actually resonate with Fair Trade. This idea is important to note in such a bipartisan time–we must remember that both parties have similar goals and desires, rather just different ideas on how to achieve those.  

A major part of this conference is to gain knowledge from other individuals in communities similar to your own. In this way, you can learn from what others have done and figure out techniques and events that may work in your community to further knowledge and the use of Fair Trade products. The Center for Service & Sustainability plans to continue adding Fair Trade products on campus and spread further knowledge of the Fair Trade movement. In the coming year we would like to further student engagement through the use of engaging games as well as find a knowledgeable member of the Fair Trade movement to speak at Champlain. For more about our current efforts as a designated Fair Trade Campus, see www.champlain.edu/fairtrade