Meeting Divine Chocolate Cocoa Farmers, Christiana & Afriye

As the season turned to spring on the first of May, it came time for the Penn State Brandywine Fair Trade Trailblazers to once again don the great banana suit and conduct one final performance on fair trade to a energetic group of students at Media Elementary School.

The fantastic event, organized by Earth & State, invited fair trade Divine Chocolate farmers, Christiana Adusei and Afriye Kwesi Boateng, to discuss the cocoa farming process to all of us in Media. Let me tell you, all of us were amazed by the amount of hard work that went into harvesting cocoa!

As consumers, we only really get to see the neatly-packaged end product of hours and hours of painstaking labor. And so, meeting Christiana and Afriye in person and hearing their stories helped so much to bring the process alive; engaging in conversations with them about their lives humanized the great effort in producing a simple bar of chocolate.

The event made me realize that in this era of increased globalization and amazing technological advancements, communication is truly the key in making the world a more transparent and more moral place–one in which unethical labor practices cannot go unanswered.

Aimee and I performed the prelude to the event with a short dialogue. While Aimee had a basket of fair trade items that she enthusiastically showed off and explained to the crowd, I was dressed in a banana suit, telling the crowd of the story of the lives of bananas as they are farmed and, later, sold in the USA.

Overall, we had a wonderful time meeting so many amazing people in the local and national fair trade action team. It was an absolute privilege to talk to everyone from Divine Chocolate and Earth & State!

To learn more about Afriye and Christiana, check out the Media Fair Trade Committee’s May newsletter!

Contributed by Fair Trade Intern, Labanya Mookerjee.

Mid-Atlantic Fair Trade Student Leadership Training

It all started with an idea for an event… and then, making the event happen!

Join Fair Trade Colleges & Universities and our host Penn State Brandywine for the Mid-Atlantic Fair Trade Student Training! The training session will focus on helping students, faculty, administration and others organize their campaigns in order to become the next Fair Trade College or University.

Sharpen your tools and skills, learn what others are doing on campus to promote Fair Trade and get to know the network of students, faculty and staff across the region who are working on Fair Trade College & University campaigns!

Guiding the training will be:

Dr. Laura Guertin – Founder of the Fair Trade Trailblazers and professor at Penn State Brandywine, the first Fair Trade University in PA and 8th in the nation.

Sarah DeMartino -  National Steering Committee Member for Fair Trade Colleges & Universities, and student leader of Fair Trade Penn State at Penn State University Main Campus. Sarah also served on the Trailblazers steering committee before transferring to PSU-Main Campus.

Billy Linstead Goldsmith – National Coordinator of Fair Trade Campaigns

Sarah DeMartino (left, Penn State University Park) and Aimee Ralph (Penn State Brandywine) as the “welcome bananas” for today’s event!

So on a sunny-yet-windy day (with La Colombe Fair Trade coffee to warm us up from Seven Stones Cafe in Media!), students and faculty from Penn State Brandywine, Penn State University Park, Saint Joseph’s University, Cabrini College, and Drexel University gathered at the Brandywine campus to spend time discussing individual campus campaigns for Fair Trade University status.  The group discussed a range of topics from successes and challenges to having events on campus, to renewing leadership, and engaging the faculty, staff, food providers, bookstore managers, and everyone else on campus in creating a sustainable effort and program for Fair Trade.

A range of Fair Trade-themed events have been taking place at our schools.  Drexel and Penn State University Park have shown Fair Trade movies.  Saint Joe’s held a tasting event with chocolate (Kopali), tea (Runa), and soda (Maine Root).  Cabrini College held a Fair Trade Catholic College Philly gathering with speakers from Philly Fair Trade Coffee and Ten Thousand Villages.  Penn State Brandywine shared the success of our Fair Trade Clothesline Art Sale.  All of us want to increase the opportunities for students to take trips that incorporate Fair Trade and to purchase (or at least taste) Fair Trade food items – to quote Billy, we want to “taste the equity!”

The day ended with everyone thinking about how to prepare for the fall semester.  Yes, even though the spring semester hasn’t ended yet, it is important for all of us to think about how to keep the momentum of our efforts continuing through the summer and to start the fall semester strong with recruiting efforts.  At least in southeast PA, we hope to get students/faculty together from our neighboring colleges for one or two Fair Trade meetings to continue today’s conversations.  Anyone up for some Ben & Jerry’s Fair Trade ice cream this summer? 

– Contributed by Dr. Laura Guertin

How to host a Fair Trade-themed clothesline art sale

I feel so fortunate to be at a campus with some amazingly creative students that are not afraid to step up as leaders and take on a project that I myself was overwhelmed to even think about organizing (of course, I didn’t tell them that!).

Here were our ingredients….

• Fresh Artists – a nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia dedicated to saving artmaking for all children and creating real opportunities for children to be philanthropic.
• The Walden School – the nation’s first Fair Trade preK-8 school, recently designated a Fair Trade School in November 2011.  our students gave a Fair Trade Show-and-Tell presentation at their school, and were eager to find a way to connect and collaborate on a future project.
• Penn State Brandywine Fair Trade TrailBlazers – led this semester by our Fair Trade intern Labanya Mookerjee, Labanya successfully coordinated and organized the communications with Fresh Artists, The Walden School, campus maintenance and facilities, and the student volunteers to make this event the success that it was.

Fair Trade Intern Labanya Mookerjee with some of the young artists from The Walden School

Our goal – have children at a local Fair Trade School create artwork on what Fair Trade means to them, bring that artwork to Penn State Brandywine for a Fair Trade-themed clothesline art sale, share/discuss their artwork with members of the Penn State Brandywine and greater communities, collect donations for the artwork, so that art supplies can be purchased for kids in the city of Chester that do not have any art supplies in their schools.  (whew – quite a goal!)

We have reported on the events with a video in this post and an overall summary, and we encourage you to review these posts first to get a feel for what the event was and how it ran.  In addition, here are some tips we felt were important to make note of during our preparations and execution of the event.  We hope that our experience can help other campuses learn how to best host a Fair Trade-themed clothesline art sale!

The Walden School artists sitting in front of their artwork, strung for all to see.

1. Get permission first! We CANNOT stress this enough!  Since this event was going to involve bringing minor children to campus, we first contacted our business office, who then contacted the Office of Risk Management of the University.  Because this was a Walden School event that was hosted at our campus, there were a series of forms that had to be signed by The Walden School and submitted to us and processed at least two weeks before the event.  Warning – this process will take longer than you may think – get started EARLY on securing all the permissions/signatures you need.  If you are just doing the event on campus with artwork by/for college students, then you should still check to see what rules may apply if your event is open to the general public from outside the campus.
2. Get the word out. We created a logo, flyer, blog post, and did a social media blast to get the word out.  We used our campus’s social media sites our own social media sites.  Our local town’s Fair Trade committee was kind enough to spread the word and promote the event in their newsletter and on their social media sites.  It worked!  Although most of the visitors to the event were campus staff and students (although, we sent a special invitation to our Chancellor to attend – and she came!), at the end of the day, all pieces of the student artwork found a home, and Fresh Artists received $375 to purchase more art supplies for students in the city of Chester.
3. Consider the time and location for the event. The best space for us to have the event on campus was a large student lounge, surrounded by benches and railings so we could easily keep the kids all sitting in one spot in front of their artwork on the clothesline, in a building with four classrooms off the lounge.  We were originally going to have the event on an afternoon when no classes were held during the time the school kids could come and visit, but then, the date changed and we ended up with 60 preK-8th grade kids in a large lounge (where yes, the noise echoed) and classes taking place.  Despite several attempts to keep the kids quiet, the children were just so thrilled to talk about their artwork and be at our campus.  It was a struggle for me, because I wanted the kids to be excited and to be happy to be participating in the event, but I was sensitive to the classrooms and college students in their rooms.  Fortunately, the campus faculty were very understanding when I explained what was going on.  One faculty member even asked how her daughter’s school could become a Fair Trade School!
4. Expand your volunteer base – connect with a faculty member/course. Early in the semester, we had a faculty member that teachers Introduction to Business ask if her students could help out with any of our Fair Trade events.  Her students assisted last semester with our Go Bananas for Fair Trade and Alta Gracia T-shirt Swap events, and we were thrilled to have her students assist again!  These volunteers were essential in helping hang up the artwork, helping the children get name tags when they arrived, distributing the cupcakes and beverages, etc.  We used 20 student volunteers the day of the event, and I do not think we could have pulled this off with any fewer.  This was also a great opportunity for us to spread the Fair Trade message to students in a freshman course and to grow our volunteer base.  These students have been asking more and more questions about Fair Trade, and we bet we are going to see them at our future events!
5. Have your volunteers easily identifiable to the children.  We had all of our college volunteers wear the same Penn State t-shirt and name tags, so the children would know who was an official student helping with the event.
6. Start the event with a short lecture/description of the event and ground rules.  We wanted to make sure the kids knew the impact of not only “selling” their artwork and sharing it with others, but what the impact would be for other kids in the region.  We showed the kids a video about Fresh Artists that also described the purpose of a clothesline art sale.  Our twist was the Fair Trade theme!  We also took the opportunity to remind the kids that they were still “in school” – no running in the halls, yelling, etc.
7. Arrange for your mascot to stop by and visit.  What kid doesn’t like a school mascot?  We had our Nittany Lion come by at the beginning of the event.  As you can imagine, the kids were thrilled!  After doing some dance moves with the Lion, they posed for some photos, showed off their artwork, and then the Lion was on his way as our event continued.
8. If you have young artists, have a snack.  Since the event was after lunch, we decided to keep with the artistic theme and ordered several cupcake cakes, each with their own design.  We had college student volunteers handle the cupcakes – they each wore plastic gloves (for sanitary purposes) and placed the cupcake in a bowl to catch the crumbs when the kids ate the cupcakes.  It worked!  We did not have a cupcake mess to clean up.  We also had water, iced tea, and lemonade for the kids to drink.
9. Not all of the young artists will want you to take their artwork home!  Some of our campus staff were disappointed when they tried to “purchase” the artwork, and a child did not want to sell their creation!  Some kids were so proud of their work that they wanted to keep the pieces themselves.  The school principal promised these kids that she would take their pieces back and hang them in their school, which she has!
10. There’s no need to put a price on the artwork – it is all priceless.  We did not put a price on the pieces of art – we only had a basket out and asked for donations for the pieces.  We figure that some college students might only be able to afford one dollar for a piece of art, while some adults could afford more.  Our strategy of not setting prices was successful beyond our dreams!  For approximately 70 pieces of art, we raised $375 – for Fresh Artists!
11. Take lots of photos, and share the results. FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANTLY… we knew we could not take photos of minor children and post these images online, unless we had signed parental permission.  (Legally, we could use photos that had the backs of the heads of children, or the faces blurred out.)  Fortunately, we did have parental permission!  As this event was a Walden School event, their school had the permission of all of the parents for pictures to be taken of their children, which allowed us to take the photos as well.  Knowing that we had the permission in place to take photos of minors, we took pictures and tweeted them during the event and posted a collection of photos online.  It’s a great way to document what we did and to share the results with others.  We hope the conversation continues and people are inspired to try their own event after seeing and reading what we did!

Our collection of creative and artistic cupcake cakes to share with the young artists – perfect for an artistic event!

The Nittany Lion gets to know one of the young artists from The Walden School.

 

Contributed by Dr. Laura Guertin

 

Mission Accomplished: Fair Trade Art Sale for Fresh Artists

On Thursday, February 21st, The Walden School joined forces with the Fair Trade Trailblazers at Penn State Brandywine to host the Fair Trade Art Sale for Fresh Artists. The event was a huge success, raising over $375 to support art programs in Chester schools and engaging the community in a vibrant discussion on all things fair trade!

Colorful artwork made by K-8 Walden School students to describe the role that fair trade in their worlds!

The event began with a short presentation on the important work that Fresh Artists does in the community. Here is a short feature clip from 6abc news on Fresh Artists:

With hearts full of excitement and anticipation, we finally moved on to the art display, where all the students stood by their artwork, explaining the meaning of their pieces to everyone who passed by. We all even had a chance to enjoy fair-trade and Fresh-Artists themed cupcake cakes!

“Home Run for Fresh Artists!”

The event was such a great way to keep the conversation going about the importance of fair trade in the community – the enthusiasm and creativity of The Walden School students brought fresh energy to the dialogue!

Here are a few more pictures from the event:

Dr. Laura Guertin, Professor of Earth Sciences & director of the PSU-BWFair Trade Trailblazers with Carly Tolson, Assistant Head Of The Walden School

Penn State Brandywine Students enjoying their newly-purchased fair trade artwork!

Art supplies collected by the Penn State Brandywine Community for Fresh Artists

PSU-BW student & Media Fair Trade Intern, Aimee Ralph, with the donations collected at the end of the day!

Contributed by Fair Trade Intern, Labanya Mookerjee

The Walden School’s Fair Trade Clothesline Art Sale

We will be adding more details to this post soon to fully describe our incredibly successful and unique event!  View the video below to see a snapshot of the Fair Trade Clothesline Art Sale that The Walden School recently held at Penn State Brandywine.  All of the art was sold, and $375 was raised for Fresh Artists to purchase school supplies for schools in Chester!

To view a video of the Fair Trade Clothesline Art Sale, please click here.

The Walden School, Penn State Brandywine, and Fair Trade – what a collaboration!

 

Upcoming Event: Fair Trade Clothesline Art Sale for Fresh Artists

The Walden School in Media, PA will be holding a Fair Trade clothesline art sale for the non-profit, Fresh Artists, on Thursday, February 21st at the Penn State Brandywine campus! The event is an initiative taken further spread awareness on the fair trade movement, while also supporting art programs in Philadelphia through Fresh Artists.

So, What’s in the Program? The Walden School students have created their own colorful artwork to express what fair trade means to them. In turn, the Fair Trade TrailBlazers of Penn State Brandywine’s Laboratory for Civic Engagement is setting up the artwork on clotheslines for display. This is a great chance to hear kids talk about their art and fair trade! The event is free, although donations will be accepted to support Fresh Artists. There will be refreshments for those who attend!

What’s Fresh Artists? Fresh Artists is a non-profit organization in Philadelphia that aims to support art programs in under-resourced schools in the area. The organization has a rather innovative business model that is structured to make children philanthropists — students are asked to make their own artwork, which is then donated to businesses in the area; in return, businesses donate to Fresh Artists to keep art-making alive! The Walden School is actively working hard to support the program through the art sale! 

When/Where is it Taking Place?  The event will be taking place in the Tomezsko Lounge at Penn State Brandywine from 1PM-2:30PM. Here is the campus address:

Penn State Brandywine
25 Yearsley Mill Road
Media, PA 19063

We hope to see you there!

Contributed by Labanya Mookerjee, Fair Trade Intern

Upcoming Event: “Facing the Monster: Slavery Then and Now”

In support of National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, the Media-Upper Providence Public Library is sponsoring an action-packed event to spread further awareness on the issues surrounding human trafficking.

The event, titled “Facing the Monster: Slavery Then and Now,” is taking place right here, in our home town of Media, PA, on Wednesday, January 30th, 2013.

The program will involve a series of diverse segments including:

• A short presentation on the stories of runaway slaves in the 1800s as well as in the present; Dr. Sam Lemon and Carol Metzker will also speak on the various actions taken to battle trafficking
• A book signing with the author of Facing the Monster: How One Person Can Fight Child Slavery, Carol Metzker
• Five information tables with representatives from the Delaware County Coalition Against Human Trafficking, the Media Fair Trade Committee & Brandywine Penn State Trailblazers, the Delco WAR and Domestic Abuse Project, CASA, and Dawn’s Place
• A vibrant discussion about slavery in modern society and methods that can be employed to eliminate trafficking

This event is free and open to the public! However, donations are always welcome to support Dawn’s Place, a local shelter for survivors of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

Doors open at 6:30PM and the event is scheduled to start at 7PM in the Parlor Room of the Media Municipal Building.

Of course, members of our very own campus fair trade organization will be at the event to show our support and to spread the growing fair trade movement. We hope to see you there!

Contributed by Labanya Mookerjee, Fair Trade Intern

Our second Alta Gracia t-shirt swap, benefitting Planet Aid

We just finished our second Alta Gracia t-shirt swap on campus, swapping gently used t-shirts for brand-new special-ordered Penn State Brandywine Alta Gracia shirts!  All collected and donated shirts are being donated to Planet Aid, a nonprofit organization that collects and recycles used clothing to protect the environment and support global sustainable development.

We are still swapping out some last-minute t-shirts, but we have given out at least 70 Alta Gracia shirts and collected over 120 to donate to Planet Aid!

For those of you that follow our website, you may recall reading about our first t-shirt swap and our recommendations for how to host a t-shirt swap.  Instead of repeating that same information, we are going to add a few updates in this blog post.

• As with our Go Bananas for Fair Trade event this semester, the students of BA 100 (Introduction to Business) helped out again in running the event.  We have to thank Professor Olear and her students once again for their enthusiasm and assistance!
• We provided a three-fold brochure with every shirt describing Alta Gracia, Planet Aid, and included our mission and vision statements for the Fair Trade TrailBlazers.  It never hurts to put the information directly into people’s hands!
• Tweet like crazy during your event!  We were thrilled to have @wearaltagracia and @planetaid both follow us and retweet our images and tweets during the event, as well as other groups.  This made us feel that we were really getting the word out and making an impact beyond our campus event.
• We were disappointed that, although we sent out campus-wide emails and posted flyers, that the announcement didn’t appear on our campus website or campus Facebook page.  We have to remember to directly ask for the assistance with this publicity from our University Relations Office to get the maximum reach across the campus population.
• And a friendly warning message… don’t assume that where you get your funding from for the t-shirts the first time will fund you a second time!  For our first t-shirt swap back in Spring 2012, our campus Student Acitivty Fee (SAF) committee funded us and even encouraged us to apply for more funding to get more shirts for a second event.  Fast forward to Fall 2012, a different SAF committee composition of students and faculty – we applied for more funding for more shirts, and we were completely denied funding – unless we became an official student club, which is not what the TrailBlazers are about (see Sarah’s post describing our campus identity).  Soooo… we had already special ordered the shirts through the campus bookstore, and the shirts were on the way, so we needed to find some funds, and fast.  We really need to thank the Laboratory for Civic Engagement for funding the student shirts, and our campus Chancellor Sophia Wisniewska for purchasing 50 shirts specifically for faculty and staff to swap.

If you would like to see more photos from our event, please visit our Flickr site.

Below, some of the shirts on their way to Planet Aid!

“Go Bananas for Fair Trade” Event

On October 9 and 10, we held our “Go Bananas for Fair Trade” event on our campus. On Tuesday and Wednesday we gave out Equal Exchange Fair Trade bananas in front of the Lion statue. with the help of Professor Olear’s BA 100 (Introduction to Business) students. After two days of standing in the rain we gave out all 611 of our bananas. Thanks to the Fair Trade Town committee in Media who assisted us with securing the donation of all of the bananas.

On Thursday and Friday of the same week, the staff in the cafeteria baked up some delicious Fair Trade banana pancakes and muffin specials, and sold 55 of them. We have submitted our numbers in Fair Trade Towns USA, and are now waiting to see if we won the”Go Bananas for Fair Trade” challenge. If we win, Penn State Brandywine can select to receive free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for a year! So keep your fingers crossed for us.

Here is a picture of our beautiful setup for the banana hand out.

And here are our two awesome banana suits that worked really hard to give out bananas.

Contributed by Louis Donaghue, Fair Trade Intern

How to host a “Go Bananas for Fair Trade” event on a college campus

The “Go Bananas for Fair Trade” event at Penn State Brandywine, a nationwide campaign organized by Fair Trade Towns USA, was a huge success! As we continue on our journey as a Fair Trade University, we continue to work this fall semester toward raising awareness of the Fair Trade movement on campus, specifically with the first-year students, staff and faculty. On October 9-10, 2012, we hosted an event where campus and community members could come to campus and receive a FREE Fair Trade banana, information about the different Fair Trade labels, and take a Fair Trade banana quiz on an iPad. Be sure to read about the lead up to our event and the resulting success! We hope that our experience can help other campuses learn how to best host a Fair Trade banana event!

For starters, we consulted the Go Bananas website and found their Resources page for setting up a banana event. This was very helpful! But there were some other considerations we had to make, especially doing this event on a college campus.

Here are a few of the important lessons we learned about “Going Bananas” on campus:

1. Get permission first! We CANNOT stress this enough!  Our campus has rules with regards to food and food service on campus, and we are sure yours does as well.  Some schools may require that all food be ordered and/or served through your dining services on campus.  We received permission from the business office on campus to obtain the Fair Trade bananas from off campus and to distribute them.
2. Get the word out. As the Go Bananas campaign ran the first two weeks of October, this was far enough into the fall semester so we were not still trying to get the semester under way.  We used our campus’s social media sites our own social media sites, as well as the template from the Go Bananas website to create 11×17 inch posters with the banana logo/template.  Our local town’s Fair Trade committee was kind enough to include us in an announcement sent to our local paper.  It worked!  In a two-day period, we were able to distribute all of our bananas.
3. Consider running the event for more than one day. We scheduled the event over two days, as we are a commuter campus and some of our students are only on campus Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, while other students are only on campus Tuesdays/Thursdays. By having the event over two days, we were able to reach as many student across our campus population as possible.
4. Expand your volunteer base – connect with a faculty member/course. Early in the semester, we had a faculty member that teachers Introduction to Business ask if her students could help out with the Go Bananas event.  This was a first for the Fair Trade TrailBlazers, having a faculty member be proactive in contacting us and getting her students involved.  We decided that after we secured the bananas, we would let the business students RUN the event!  This was a great opportunity for us to spread the Fair Trade message to 40 first-semester freshmen in the course and to grow our volunteer base.  These students have been asking more and more questions about Fair Trade, and we bet we are going to see them at our future events!
5. Purchase more bananas than you think you will need. We actually ran out of bananas before the second day of the event was complete.  Our original plan was to just distribute one banana per student/staff/faculty member, but we couldn’t say “no” to the handful of students that asked for bananas and flyers to provide to family members (again, we are a commuter campus where most of our students still live with their families).  This provided us an opportunity to spread the “fair trade” message beyond campus!
6. Think about jazzing up your bananas with additional ingredients. We wanted to do chocolate-covered bananas, but we couldn’t figure out how to have warm, melted Fair Trade chocolate in the location we were doing the event for people to dunk their bananas in.  We saw some photos online of other universities doing some innovative slicing of bananas and pouring chocolate and sprinkles on top – what fun!  We think taking our event to the next level with more “trimmings” next time will bring a new twist for us the next time, to bring more people back for more bananas.
7. Choose a good time, overlap with the breakfast/lunch hours. We set our event at 10AM to 1PM both days, so that people could grab a banana between our morning classes and when they arrived on campus.  Don’t be concerned if you don’t have a large group right when you begin, as people will filter in during the event – most likely, as we say, different students in the morning than over the lunch hour.
8. Choose a good location on campus.  Typically, most groups on our campus set up tables to promote events right outside the doors of the building that has our cafeteria and athletic center.  We decided to set up outdoors in the center of campus, right next to our Lion Shrine statue.  This allowed us to be visible as students left most of our academic buildings between classes, and we could “spread out” and direct people walking on sidewalks to walk over to our display to grab a banana.  We certainly feel that location, location, location really mattered!
9. Have a backup plan for bad weather.  We booked an indoor location to give out the bananas, in case of really bad weather.  Well, it actually ended up raining BOTH days of our event, but a little wet weather kept us outside and our energy was not dampened – we still had a successful event!  The only part we were disappointed with was that because of the rain, not many students stayed by our tables outside to eat their banana, they went inside instead.
10. Have a banana costume (or two). We had two banana costumes (Halloween costumes) available for students to wear.  At first, we were not sure if anyone would wear the costume, but then it turned out we had more students that wanted to wear the costumes than we could manage!  Having very energetic students willing to go around campus in the costumes really helped pull people over to our tables and added alot of fun to the activity.  We were a popular spot for photos!
11. Include an education component. We gave out a half-page flyer with every banana that provided some websites that talked about Fair Trade bananas and a list of where Fair Trade bananas can be purchased locally.  We also included an information table (pictured below) with samples of products and another handout listing the different Fair Trade certification labels and describing what these labels mean.  We even created a banana quiz for people to take on the iPad, which provided a fun way to bring technology and an interactive activity to the event.
12. Include an advocacy component. Our original plan was to have a petition for our students to sign to get our campus dining services to serve Fair Trade bananas – but, as it turned out, they started serving Fair Trade bananas the week we had our event.  We’re thrilled that they are STILL serving Fair Trade bananas, and we hope this lasts the entire academic year.
13. Be environmentally responsible – compost those banana peels.  We checked with the head of our campus landscaping, and it turns out he has two compost piles on campus.  He was more than willing to provide a wheel barrel for us to collect the banana peels so he could compost them (see photo).  This was a nice addition to our event and our campus environmental mission.
14. Take lots of photos, and share the results. We took pictures and tweeted them during the event and posted a collection of photos in our flickr account after the banana event.  It’s a great way to document what we did and to share the results with others.  We hope the conversation continues and people are inspired to try their own event after seeing and reading what we did!

Contributed by Dr. Laura Guertin

Hand in Hand Sustainable Suds Seminar

Tuesday, November 13

11:30AM-12:30PM

Tomezsko Building Classroom Lounge (first floor), Penn State Brandywine

Directions to campus and campus map (Building #3)

The Penn State Brandywine Fair Trade TrailBlazers, in conjunction with the Campus Common Read Committee, will be hosting a seminar by the co-founder of Hand in Hand Soap Bill Glaab.  Hand in Hand Soap is a product certified by the Natural Products Association and Fair Trade USA (see this article on FTUSA’s website).

From Hand in Hand’s website:

Hand in Hand Soap was conceived in 2011 by two social entrepreneurs who believe that business can do so much more than just make money… Courtney and Bill set out to start a business based on sustainable giving.  By directly tying charitable donations to the sale of an everyday product, Hand in Hand is able to give soap to those in need and save lives without depending on a single donation.  For every bar purchased, Hand in Hand will donate a bar to save a life… Each bar of soap is 100% eco-friendly, biodegradable, and contains ingredients ethically harvested from sustainable resources.  We have created what we consider to be the most environmentally friendly and ethically conscious soaps on the market today.

On the day of the seminar, the campus is carrying out a one-day soap drive for My Neighbor’s Children, an organization Hand in Hand teams up with to deliver soap to orphaned children worldwide.  We are asking everyone to bring a bar of soap (or two or three or four!) to campus the day of the seminar to then be donated.

The seminar is free and open to the public.  If you have any questions, please contact Connie at (610) 892-1249 or via email at cas34@psu.edu

 

Ten Thousand Villages hosts a Going Bananas Cook-Off

As part of the Go Bananas for Fair Trade campaign, Ten Thousand Villages on State Street in Media, PA, will be hosting a Going Bananas Cook-Off!  During “Second Saturday,” October 13, bakers/chefs are asked to bring their Fair Trade banana creation, made with at least two additional Fair Trade items, to the Ten Thousand Villages store on State Street before 12:30PM.  All entries will be judged between 1PM and 4PM by the staff and store customers based on use of fair trade ingredients, presentation, creativity, and taste.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/439024039472963/

To find Fair Trade bananas locally, please visit Whole Foods, Swarthmore Co-op, or Martindale’s Natural Market in Springfield.  Most Sam’s Clubs in Pennsylvania and Delaware also sell Fair Trade bananas.

 

 

Going Bananas with Social Media

Wednesday (August 15, 2012) evening, Fair Trade Towns USA hosted a webinar about their Go Bananas Challenge and went over some tips for effectively using social media for spreading Fair Trade awareness during Fair Trade Month in October and during the rest of the year.

We were particularly interested in the Go Bananas Challenge portion of the webinar, as the TrailBlazers are hoping to participate and host some events on campus, but the discussion on social media tips turned out to be just as helpful. Fair Trade Towns USA pointed out a Tool Kit  they have on their website for brainstorming ideas for events, hosting events, and a wealth of other information.  Our plan, at this point, is to do something with Fair Trade Banana splits (can you imagine… Fair Trade Bananas, Fair Trade ice cream, and Fair Trade chocolate sauce!), though we are still muddling through some logistics and other ideas. We’ll post more about  our exact plans closer to October (and after we meet with our food vendor on campus), but the webinar got us thinking about what events might be doable, how do we want to educate our campus population, who we should be contacting, etc. We hope that the Tool Kit above is as helpful for everyone else as it was for us!

But, the point we are most eager to share and blog about is actually the social media aspect of the webinar. Obviously, the TrailBlazers have been very much active in the social media world, and we are always looking for tips and ways to improve our outreach. We found two points in particular to be helping, but for the full guideline list, click here .

One point that really stuck out to us was food. Food posts and photos are some of the more popular topics in the world of social media. A significant chunk of the hits and likes on our own website have been for our food events and recipes, and we had wondered for a while if this was just a phenomena we were experiencing or if it was a common occurrence in the wider community.  Fair Trade Towns USA confirmed that food is a hot-button topic on the internet, and people love to look at food and talk about food. Luckily, when talking about Fair Trade, food comes up often, so sharing food related posts is easy and a great way to get people engaged. As budding social media users, all of us TrailBlazers recommend adding some food flair now and again to get people’s attention.

Fair Trade Towns USA also talked about the power of a positive post. Positive posts get more retweets and shares than negative posts, and in the world of Fair Trade, shining the movement in the best light is important for keeping consumers and the general public feeling good about Fair Trade.

We especially liked these points because they can easily be tied into the Go Bananas Challenge. In addition to hosting events, we need to effectively get the word out there, and social media has been a wonderful tool for getting people aware of what we’re doing and involved. Getting our campus involved with food while educating on the positive impacts of Fair Trade bananas will hopefully get more of our community (and the wider community!) involved with Fair Trade.

-Contributed by Sarah DeMartino, Fair Trade Intern

How to host a Fair Trade s’more event on a college campus

The Fair Trade s’more event at Penn State Brandywine, Global Exchange’s We Want More from Our S’mores, was a huge success! As we continue on our journey as a Fair Trade University, we have worked all summer toward raising awareness of the Fair Trade movement on campus, specifically with the staff and faculty. On August 16, 2012, we hosted an event where campus and community members could come to campus to make a Fair Trade s’more and hear about the challenges in the cocoa industry. Be sure to read about the lead up to our event and the resulting success! We hope that our experience can help other campuses learn how to best host a Fair Trade s’more event!

For starters, we consulted the Global Exchange website and found their step-by-step checklist for setting up a s’more event.  This was very helpful!  But there were some other considerations we had to make, especially doing this event on a college campus in the summer.

Here are a few of the important lessons we learned about hosting a s’more event on campus:

1. Get permission first! We CANNOT stress this enough!  Our campus does not have any fire pits or grills.  We checked with the director of business services on campus to see if we could have permission to toast marshmallows (we saw instructions online on how to soften marshmallows in the microwave, but we knew it would not be the same).  We received permission to use a propane grill outdoors in an open area, as long as campus security was present with a fire extinguisher the entire time (and he was!).  The propane grill did not have the “flame” that is typically associated with making s’mores, but the marshmallows did get soft and gooey!  Be sure to check with the appropriate office on campus to see when, where, and how you can make s’mores.
2. Get the word out. As the We Want More from Our S’mores campaign ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the timing made it difficult to get many students involved, but a great opportunity to get faculty and staff on board.  We used our campus’s social media sites our own social media sites, and sent an announcement to our local town’s Fair Trade committee.  We also emailed the faculty and staff email lists on campus to reach the people we knew would be around in the summer, and we sent specific invitations to campus administrators and alumni.  It worked!  We had 40 people in attendance, with a great mix of faculty, staff, and some students that were on campus that day.
3. Have a RSVP form, but only use it as an estimate. We sent out a link to our online RSVP form in our emails and social media sites, so we could figure out how much food to purchase.  We had 25 people fill out our online RSVP form, but as I just stated, 40 people showed up!  Once word of mouth started spreading around campus about the event, we think people decided close to the date of the event to attend, and by that point, forgot about the RSVP.  And of the people that did RSVP, approximately 10 of them did not attend.  So although the RSVP form was a great idea, it did not exactly help with our planning (see our next point….)  But we certainly didn’t mind the overflow of people, because the more we can reach out to, the better!
4. Purchase more ingredients than the RSVP says you will need. Because we had more people show up than responded to the invitation, we were relieved we bought extra ingredients!  And, we saw some people randomly chomping down on giant marshmallows and chocolate, in more of a deconstructed s’more form, which was fine by us!
5. Think about jazzing up your s’mores with additional ingredients. We also purchased Fair Trade bananas from Whole Foods and organic strawberries, which allowed us the opportunity to show the Fair Trade logo to attendees, to let them know where to purchase these food items, themselves, and to discuss the developing Domestic Fair Trade certification movement (since there are no Fair Trade strawberries at this time).
6. Choose a good time, overlap with the lunch hour. We set our event at 12:30PM-1:30PM, so that people could eat their lunch first and then come over for a s’more.  This also worked well for staff/faculty that were in lunchtime meetings from Noon-1PM.  We had many people come at different times in the hour, and we didn’t finish cleaning up until 2PM.  So don’t be concerned if you don’t have a large group right when you begin, as people will filter in during the event.
7. Include an education component. We gave a short talk about what is going on with child slave labor in the cocoa industry, letting people know which chocolate companies are Fair Trade, which ones are making progress, and which ones have much progress that still needs to be made.
8. Include an advocacy component. We had several copies of the Global Exchange petition for the Raise the Bar campaign.  By having multiple copies around the area we hosted the event, we were able to fill three pages with signatures.  This allowed people to not only learn about Fair Trade chocolate, but to get involved by making their voice heard.
9. Take lots of photos, and share the results. We took pictures and tweeted them during the event and posted a collection of photos in our flickr account after the s’more fest.  It’s a great way to document what we did and to share the results with others.  We hope the conversation continues and people are inspired to try their own event after seeing and reading what we did!

Contributed by Dr. Laura Guertin

Celebrating Ethical Chocolate with S’mores at Penn State Brandywine

Today (August 16, 2012) the Fair Trade TrailBlazers and the Penn State Brandywine Community participated in Global Exchange’s “We Want More from our S’mores” event.  This initiative was started by Global Exchange to put pressure on the chocolate industry to stop using child labor and to continue to seek more ethical means of producing chocolate (see our previous post for more details). From 12:30 to 1:30, faculty, staff, and students gathered in the Vairo Library courtyard and made Fair Trade S’mores to help Global Exchange’s campaign.  Fair Trade Equal Exchange chocolate (the dark mini bars) was provided as well as Fair Trade Bananas from Whole Foods. Yes, you read correctly. Fair Trade Bananas! These were not just any Fair Trade S’mores, but gourmet Fair Trade S’mores. In addition to jumbo sized marshmallows and boxes and boxes of graham crackers, organic strawberries were provided (sadly not Fair Trade. All the more reason why we need a domestic Fair Trade system). By the end of the event, 40 people attended, 45 s’mores were eaten, and 25 people signed the We Want More from Our S’mores petition. It was truly a wonderful and successful event!

Here are some photos from this afternoon!

Here are all of the lovely ingredients we used in our Fair Trade S’mores!

A completed S’more.

Here we have a group of students and faculty toasting some marshmallows.

TrailBlazer Jack Ramaika enjoys a Fair Trade S’more!

Fair Trade Intern and TrailBlazer Sarah DeMartino talks to the crowd about the controversy in the Chocolate Industry and the importance of the “We Want More from our S’mores” event.

Louis Donaghue (TrailBlazer and Fall Fair Trade Intern), Jack Ramaika (TrailBlazer), and Sarah DeMartino (TrailBlazer and Summer Fair Trade Intern) pose for a photo during the event.

So Many S’mores eaten!

To see more photos, check out our Flickr page!

-Contributed by Sarah DeMartino, Fair Trade Intern

Seeking Ethical Chocolate – A Fair Trade S’more Event!

The chocolate industry has been a growing point of controversy and change. An awareness of how chocolate is made and who makes it has stirred the need to move the industry in a more positive and humane direction.  Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa is produced in West Africa, and it is estimated that around 1.8 million children are working on cocoa farms. In a study conducted (additional article) by Tulane University, it was determined that some of the children are working in very poor and often dangerous conditions, sustaining injuries, and some have been trafficked onto these farms (additional article).

There has been an outcry for the chocolate industry to end child labor from many different organizations and groups. Some major chocolate companies involved with child labor are Mars, Cadbury, Nestle, and Hershey, and there has been some movement from each of these companies to mitigate the issue.

Mars has promised to be child-labor free by 2020 and is working with the U.S. Department of Labor and the International Labour Organization to understand the complexities of child labor and find “…more effective strategies to combat trafficking…”.

Britain’s popular Cadbury  has also taken steps to promote a more ethical chocolate industry and became Fair Trade (additional article), putting Fair Trade certified chocolate on store shelves back in 2010 .

Nestle partnered with the Fair Labor Association to identify if they have child laborers working under them and hopes to resolve any child labor issues they may have been supporting.

Hershey’s chocolate has also begun to take steps to amend its business practices. Hershey has agreed to sell “Bliss” chocolate, a Rainforest Alliance certified chocolate bar. It has also pledged $10 million over the next five years to help educate farmers in West Africa and improve their trade to fight child labor. As America’s biggest chocolate producer, Hershey is under a lot of  pressure to continue to make steps toward fighting child labor. On June 12, 2012, leaders from AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Global Exchange, Green America, the International Labor Rights Forum, and the National Guestworker Alliance, called for Hershey to step up and make reforms for its chocolate production and “…ongoing use of abusive child labor…”.

The “We Want more from our S’Mores” event was started by Global Exchange on July 4, 2012 to further encourage Hershey to move in a more ethical direction. The event calls for making Fair Trade ingredient s’mores and runs until Labor Day. For more information about having your own event, click here.

The Penn State Brandywine TrailBlazers will be participating in this event to promote a more ethical chocolate system, and hopes to not only encourage Hershey to continue to grow and expand its effort to fight child labor, but the rest of the chocolate industry as well. Our event will be held 12:30PM on Thursday August 16, 2012, in the Vairo Building Courtyard on the Penn State Brandywine campus. If you would like to attend for some additional discussion and to create your own Fair Trade s’more (or two, or three, or four…), please RSVP here!

UPDATE: Article on Change.org on National S’more Day: Make Yours Fair Trade (08/10/2012)

-Contributed by Sarah DeMartino, Fair Trade Intern

Upcoming Event at the Whole Foods Market in Glen Mills!

This coming Friday (August 3, 2012) the Whole Foods Market in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, will be selling Whole Trade Roses for $5 a dozen. All Whole Trade farmers use environmentally friendly methods to grow their roses,  and farmers are paid fairly for their work and treated equally. For more information about the producers working with Whole Foods, click here. To stay in the loop with the Whole Foods Market in Glen Mills, check out their Facebook page!

The Whole Foods Market in Glen Mills is located at: 475 Wilmington West Chester Pike, Glen Mills, Pennsylvania 19342

-Contributed by Dr. Jennifer Zosh and Sarah DeMartino, Fair Trade Intern

Celebrating Bastille Day with Media and Cupcakes

This past Saturday, July 14, 2012, the Penn State Brandywine Fair Trade TrailBlazers were excited to join the town of Media in its Bastille Day celebrations. The whole of State Street closed down so that booths could set up and restaurants could set out extra seating. The event kicked off at around 6:30 in the evening with an awards ceremony and a reenactment of the storming of the Bastille. Media presented Penn State Brandywine with a Regional Fair Trade award, and we were honored to accept the award! We also congratulate the other Fair Trade award winners on an awesome job and well done!

We also participated in Ten Thousand Villages in Media’s Fair Trade cooking competition, “Knock Their Block Off,” submitting my famous Fair Trade Vanilla Vegan Chai Cupcakes! Four other contestants entered the competition. Take a look at all of the yummy entries!

Below, you will find some other photos from the event.

Above are Bastille Day actors setting up the main stage at the intersection of State and Olive Streets in Media.

Here we are, Dr. Laura Guertin, Sarah DeMartino, and Louis Donaghue accepting the regional award from Media!

And here are all of us after the award!

Here was something cool we saw! At the Fair Trade (run by Media’s Fair Trade Town Committee) information desk, there was a clothesline with Fair Trade messages hung on it. People could come up and write or draw what Fair Trade meant to them!

All in all, we had a wonderfully fun time in Media and can’t wait for their next event!

For more images of Media’s Bastille day, check out our Flickr page!

-Contributed by Sarah DeMartino, First Fair Trade Intern

A Call To Arms (Or Spatulas): Fair Trade Media Cook-Off

On July 14 the town of Media will be having its “Knock Their Block Off” Fair Trade cooking competition, and Penn State Brandywine is pleased to say that it will be participating. Registration opens up on July 7, and runs until July 11. I, Sarah DeMartino, the infamous Fair Trade Vegan-Chai Cupcake Chef and TrailBlazer, will be participating and representing my Penn State Brandywine community!  I am eager to share my recipe and see what other fabulous entries are submitted!

The event is hosted by Ten Thousand Villages in Media, and all entries must be submitted to the store between noon and 2 p.m. Judging will start at 2 p.m. and end at 5 p.m. Winners will be announced the following day, July 15, on Facebook and in the store, so you don’t need to be at the store in order to win.

Each entry must include at least 2 Fair Trade ingredients, recipes must be typed up, and only non-alcoholic drinks can be submitted. All entries must be labeled with your name!

So, I encourage people to take up their cooking utensils and cook for Fair Trade! I look forward to seeing what other people prepare and good luck to everyone!

-Contributed by Sarah DeMartino, First Fair Trade Intern

Declaring Fair Trade University status on World Fair Trade Day

May 12, 2012, is a special date in Penn State Brandywine’s history.  To kick off a community event held on campus (Middletown Community Day), Chancellor Sophia Wisniewska read an announcement that Penn State Brandywine is officially designated with Fair Trade University status.  The gathered crowd responded with cheers and applause upon hearing the news.  As the faculty mentor for the students that made this possible, I could not feel more pride than I did on that day, knowing that the students had reached this amazing goal and was celebrating their achievement on World Fair Trade Day with the community members present.

Pictured left to right: Sara Neville, Chancellor Sophia Wisniewska, Louis Donaghue, Dr. Laura Guertin

The students, the Fair Trade TrailBlazers, had a table at the four-hour event with a display of various Fair Trade items, our Fair Trade University certificate, brochures and handouts describing what Fair Trade means at Penn State Brandywine and links to our website and social media sites, and free samples of Equal Exchange chocolate taped to information cards the students designed.  The TrailBlazers distributed over 400 chocolate bars to people that were curious to learn more about Fair Trade, already familiar with Fair Trade, and just Penn State Proud of the students taking a stand in the battle against global poverty.  The day was thrilling, exhausting, and challenging to keep the chocolate samples from melting in the warm sunshine!

The TrailBlazers received support from fellow student supporter Aimee Ralph (far left in photo above) and Bryan Marton’s (far right in photo) middle school daughter, who was so inspired by our Fair Trade conversations that day that she is going back to her school to talk about Fair Trade!  We were also visited at the beginning of the day by Penn State University student Abbey Dufoe, the student that completed an independent study project in Summer 2011 that started the Fair Trade ball rolling at the Brandywine campus.

We look forward to continuing the discussions, education, and outreach of Fair Trade in Media and beyond!

Contributed by Dr. Laura Guertin

T-Shirt swap was a huge success!

The Penn State Brandywine first Fair Trade T-Shirt Exchange was a huge success. We exchanged 72 t-shirts and received 237 and counting in return! This t-shirt swap could not have been done without all the excellent students in our class, our hard working teacher, and all the staff and faculty around campus.

The Penn State Fair Trade t-shirts were purchased from Alta Gracia, which is a fair trade company located in the Dominican Republic, with a grant from the Student Allocations Fee Committee. All the students in the class and our professor Dr. G did a wonderful job preparing for our t-shirt swap. We put together brochures, a list of our URLs for our social networks, and posters to promote Fair Trade and our t-shirt swap. For the swap the rules were simple. You could bring in any number of t-shirts as long as they were slightly used and wearable, and in exchange the swapper gets one Penn State Fair Trade t-shirt. The swap was held on Wednesday and Thursday of this past week and was held indoors and outdoors. On Wednesday our turnout was fairly small because most of the students and staff were not aware that the swap was going on, despite the flyers and emails. A lot of students were excited about the swap when they saw it and told us that they would be back on Thursday with a t-shirt. On Thursday the swap skyrocketed through the roof in popularity. Students and staff did a great job of contributing.

This swap made our movement even more interesting then ever. We had fun with this swap but also did a great job of getting the word out to the students and staff. On behalf of our ENVST400W class we would like to thank everyone that made this possible and we would also like to throw a special thank you to Alta Gracia and Joe Buskirk from our Penn State Brandywine bookstore, donating 37 t-shirts from the bookstore himself, for making this swap a huge success.

Contributed by Joe Sweeny

How to host a Fair Trade t-shirt swap!

The Fair Trade t-shirt exchange at Penn State Brandywine was a huge success! During our journey toward becoming a Fair Trade University, we have worked toward raising awareness of the Fair Trade movement and our efforts on campus. As part of the process, we’ve committed to hosting several Fair Trade events on campus each semester. Our first big event was hosting Amanda White from Divine Chocolate (read more about it here), and our second event was Wednesday and Thursday’s Fair Trade T-shirt exchange. We hope that our experience can help other campuses learn how to best host a Fair Trade T-shirt Swap!

Aimee Ralph, showing some Penn State pride! (photo via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)

Our t-shirt swap was a two-day event where students could bring in a gently used t-shirt to exchange for a brand new, Fair Trade, Penn State t-shirt from Alta Gracia Apparel. Our 72 Fair Trade tees quickly disappeared, and we received 237 tees for charity in exchange! All of the donated tees were given to local Planet Aid drop boxes. We chose Planet Aid because we felt that their mission of global sustainability and recycling clothing complements the missions of the Fair Trade movement.

Here are a few of the important lessons we learned about hosting a t-shirt swap:

1. Get the word out! Be sure to effectively use your campus’s social media and other forms of making announcements to make sure that everyone knows about the event. Everyone wants a free t-shirt (which is a huge draw for spreading the Fair Trade message), but on our campus, not everyone knew about the swap. If we had spread the word a bit better, we could have made a bigger impact.
2. Set your date early, hold the event later. Setting the date early in the semester will help your committee spread the word, so that a t-shirt swap later in the semester will be successful.
3. Apply for funding. You might be surprised at the funds your school will provide for you. We not only got our 72 t-shirts donated (with the help of our campus’s student activity fee), but we also got our student government association to provide funding for us for future activities on campus.
4. Students first! If you are doing a two-day event, dedicate the first day to students only. On the second day, set aside the first half of your event for students and then give staff and faculty the opportunity to swap for a tee. Unfortunately, we ran out so quickly that some students who wanted to participate didn’t get a chance to snag a Fair Trade tee!
5. Have an elevator speech & Fair Trade literature. Some students were confused as to why we were collecting old t-shirts to donate to charity when we had a slew snazzy new shirts to give out for free. “Why don’t you just donate those?” one student asked us. We realized that although we had a brochure that explained why we were doing the swap, and our posters all said something about Fair Trade, the cause of the event was lost on a lot of people. Be prepared with a 30 seconds-or-less “elevator speech” for the students who want to get their hands on free swag. Why are you doing this swap? What is Fair Trade? What are you doing on campus to promote the movement? In addition to the brochure, we handed out a half-sheet of paper that included links to our social media outlets and petition on change.org.

Joe gives a Fair Trade tee to Director of Student Affairs, Dr. Matthew Shupp, while Sarah gets footage of the TrailBlazers in action (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)

 Bryan and Sara, packing up the donated tees… all 237 of them! (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)

Sara talks to Matthew Bodek, Instructional Design Specialist on campus (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)

The whole lot! Thanks PSU Brandywine, for your support! (via Fair Trade at Penn State Brandywine)

With a campus of about 1600 students, we were able to give away 72 t-shirts without a problem. For campuses with a larger student body, make sure you order enough tees! This is an event that will definitely bring success to your movement on campus.

Contributed by Sara Neville.

Fair Trade pancakes, thanks to Rotary Club of Media

This morning, I started my day by attending the Rotary Club of Media‘s Pancake Day, held at Media Elementary School.  Although many groups in the region have a Pancake Breakfast as a fundraiser, I really like how this one put the “Fair Trade” twist on the event so true to Media’s identity.  For an extra dollar, visitors could get pancakes made with Fair Trade bananas or Fair Trade chocolate chips.  Yummy!

Contributed by Dr. Laura Guertin