Turn It Upside Down

Happy Halloween!
In honor of the day, we're doing our own version of the Reverse Trick or Treat thing we told you about earlier--handing out chocolate and information on fair trade chocolate to all comers in our store. I thought I'd share with all of you in Internet world what, exactly, we're sharing with folks, and give you a taste (bad pun, I can't help it) of the info we're sharing with everyone today.

I also thought you might be interested by this Creative Loafing story on a family who is celebrating Halloween with Reverse Trick or Treat for the first time this year.
I've posted the full article below. (OCD note: I am not responsible for the spelling errors in this story!)

Shannon Ward knows that what she buys for her family effects other people.That’s why she and her three kids are participating Reverse Trick or Treating this Halloween.
Seven year old Glynis, 11-year-old Nathan and 13-year-old Thomas will be handing out cards attached to a fair trade piece of chocolate to people in Ward’s father’s Huntersville neighborhood.
“I noticed that with Sameritan’s Purse, the group that sends the shoe boxes, a lot of them go to countries where a lot of chocolate and coffee comes from and I wondered how many of those families are farmers who are getting taken advantage of?” Ward said.
Global Exchange, a global human rights protection agency based out of San Francisco created this program. The organization has been around for over 20 years. 2009 marks the 3rd year of the Reverse Trick-or-Treating program.
This is the first year that the Ward family has had a chance to participate.
“Fair trade is really important to my family and we only buy fair trade chocolate and coffee. There is such an enormous amount of chocolate consumed around this time of year and Valentine’s Day that I just wanted to let people know about it. I think if more people knew about what fair trade is and what it means when they don’t buy fair trade that it would sway them to make different decisions or at least think about the decisions that they’re making.”
So, what is fair trade?
It is a social movement to get higher payment to the farmers in developing countries that produce things like coffee, chocolate and sugar to name a few items.
Ward said that she and her family try to expose as many people to fair trade items. Whenever there is a chance to share things at her kids’ school, The Community School of Davidson, she makes a handcrafted hot chocolate made with fair trade ingredients to get the conversation rolling.
Where does Ward find fair trade coffee and chocolate. The coffee, she said, is easy.
“You can find fair trade coffee any where. Even Wal-Mart and Food Lion sell it now,” she said.
But the chocolate, you have to search for. Here’s a hint — it ain’t Hershey’s. Ward said stores like Earth Fare and Healthy Home Market have fair trade chocolate.
She also said she buys some fair trade chocolate online at Sweet Earth Organic Chocolate.
Ward said she hopes that more people will start paying attention to fair trade and think about the choices they make.

This is not so much an event as it is a simple freebie.
Shop at World Next Door on Halloween dressed in your Halloween costume, and you'll receive a free bar of fair trade chocolate!

Anyone who makes a purchase on Halloween, but is not in costume, will get a free individually wrapped piece of fair trade dark chocolate.

Savor the sweetness of fair trade and know that the money you spend on every fair trade purchase chips away at extreme poverty in developing countries.

End Human Trafficking

Remember the video we posted just a few days ago? The one that urged consumers to think twice about the impact their choices have before purchasing? Well, I've found more on the subject, courtesy of Voice of America News, which brings us more on the awareness campaign by the International Organization for Migration.
According to VOA News, Richard Danzieger, head of the Global Counter Trafficking Program at IOM, says that, although problems like poverty and misogyny contribute to human trafficking, it is the consumer's demand for unreasonably inexpensive labor and goods that drives the trade.

He [Danziger] says the campaign aims to change consumer behavior through the use of soft power, not hard power. "We are not asking people to boycott a particular brand or boycott a particular super market or chain store. We are simply asking people to find out what lies behind the products they buy. We are asking people to buy responsibly," he said.
The International Labor Organization estimates 12.3 million people are in forced or bonded labor and sexual servitude around the world.
Danziger says stories about human trafficking usually focus on women and girls used for sexual exploitation. But he says both men and women are trafficked for labor exploitation.
He says there have been large increases in the last five years in the trafficking of men and boys to work in the agricultural, construction, fishing and domestic service sector. "We estimate, based on some ILO (International Labor Organization) figures that in industrialized countries there are over 100,000 trafficked migrant workers. So, severely exploited migrant workers. If they were paid their back wages, the wages they are due, it could come to something like $2.5 billion. So, we are talking about large sums. Throughout the world, there is an estimate by the ILO of what we call stolen wages of almost $20 billion," he said.

Halloween Sale

Buy Responsibly

This is a simple look at why we should think about the repercussions of our buying choices. This commercial was shot for the "Buy Responsibly" campaign kicking off in Europe, which is sponsored by International Organization for Migration. This clip is only 30 seconds long, so you have time for this.




Here's what blogger Amanda had to say after seeing the video: "Our demand for cheaper products is one of the big drivers behind human trafficking in a number of industries, from the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the houses we live in. In fact, slavery in the production of consumer goods is so pervasive, I can guarantee that both you and I own at least a handful of items made by slaves; we have eaten food grown, harvested, or produced by slaves. So if we are going to get serious about ending human trafficking, we need to take the Buy Responsibly campaign's message to heart and make an effort to purge our buying habits of slave-made goods. So does that mean you should boycott every industry that has used slavery? No. For one, it's not a very sustainable lifestyle choice. Information about which products have been tainted by slavery is often outdated or inaccurate. Plus, the use of human trafficking in supply chains is so prolific, you'd be starving and naked before long, and very few people are willing to live like that voluntarily. While boycotts have changed and can improve corporate behaviour, boycotting may put non-trafficked workers' jobs at risk, making some workers worse off. Before considering boycotting a certain product, think about who will profit from and who will be affected by the boycott. If you do boycott, make specific demands and agree to end the boycott when those demands are met. Another effective way to buy more responsibly is to buy products from companies that have a commitment to fair labor practices. When given a choice between a Fair Trade item and another one, go with the Fair Trade option. Choose products from companies with reputations for treating workers fairly. Tell companies that the rights of workers is an important consideration in your choice of products. These may seem like very small steps, but as companies see that fair labor standards are important to consumers, they will meet that demand like they now meet our demand for low prices."

New, New, New!

Heads up: there is a LOT of new stuff on our website. Most of these are new products from Handmade Expressions, one of our primary fair trade partners. Be sure to check everything out!

Free Coffee Cupping

Come join us this Saturday, Oct. 17, from 2-4 p.m. as we host a free coffee cupping (like a wine tasting, but with coffee) at our store. Guests from Pasha Coffee and Tea will be on hand to guide us through the experience. Pasha is the only coffeehouse in Chattanooga to serve only fair trade and organic coffee and tea, so their staff have lots of experience and wisdom to share.
We at World Next Door will also be sharing a bit about how Fair Trade principles benefit small coffee farmers in developing countries.
You don't want to miss this! We look forward to seeing you Saturday.

Back to Nepal!

Well, I never dreamed that I would be going back to Nepal in the same year. But I leave Friday! Nathan and I continue to be amazed at the number of connections we have with this country. Not only through fair trade organizations that we work with, but also through other friends in town. This trip though, Nathan will be unable to come as there is much work to be done at World Next Door! Stop by and say hello because he might be kinda lonely :-). And at the end of the month we'll be participating in GPS' annual Robin Hood event, so Nathan and Beth (our amazing, awesome, "we could not do this without her!" blog writer and assistant manager) will be quite busy. My dad will be going to Nepal this time, and I'm excited about showing him a little more of how fair trade works.

If you'll remember with me back to late April and May, Nathan and I were in India and Nepal visiting fair trade groups. We also started a relationship with an organization that is rescuing girls from being trafficked at the border of Nepal and India. You can read about how that works here. We're selling their banana fiber products in the shop right now and are very excited about the customer response. Sometimes when you purchase things, you think they will sell, but you never really know until they go on the shelves. These products are beautifully made, and everytime I look at them, I can't help but think of the women and girls in Nepal who are being empowered through the skills that they have learned at the half-way house. Not only have they been rescued/prevented from a life of prostitution, but they are being empowered to go back into their communities to help other girls learn how to read, write, sew, etc. It is very exciting! You can see some of these products on our website. Scroll down to the bottom and look for the banana fiber hats and scarves.

Half of my time in Nepal will be spent at the half-way house, hopefully talking about products and how we can partner with them better as a store. The other half will be in the mountains where my dad and other Nepali doctors will be doing a medical clinic. We fly into a village in the mountains, and then have to hike 3 or 4 hours- complete with horses carrying our medical supplies!- to another village where the clinic will be. I don't have any medical experience but I can play with kids, run medicines to people, and be an extra set of hands. I will try to post some blog entries while I'm gone but probably will not have as much access to a computer as Nathan and I did last time. I'm sure to come back with lots of stories though!

So, see you in a couple of weeks with (I hope) 3 or 4 duffel bags full of product!

Why Bananas Matter

Bananas are a quick, cheap, nutritious and delicious snack. But some producers are slashing their banana prices so low that it may harm the farmers who try to make a living off of this produce.

This article in Britain's The Independent offers some thought-provoking questions--and answers--on the subject of why the price we pay for bananas at the market actually matters. The Independent decided to tackle the subject after Britain's second-largest supermarket chain slashed their banana prices by more than half since last Christmas.

Here are some excerpts:

So? Supermarkets are always cutting prices, aren't they?
It's special for two reasons. One, bananas are the top selling item in British grocery - the trade is worth nearly £600m per year. In terms of value, only petrol and lottery tickets outsell bananas in supermarkets. This means that banana prices have become a key weathervane, like the prices of traditional staples such as bread and milk, of supermarket prices in general. People notice banana prices. If shoppers think you have cheap bananas, they may think your prices are lower across the board. Secondly, and more importantly, in real terms these are probably the lowest prices for bananas that have ever been charged.

Well that's great, isn't it?
It very much depends on who you are. If you're a banana consumer (and most of us are), your weekly banana bill has been cut by half in less than a year. There's a recession on, and every little helps. Bring on the banana fritters and the banana splits. On the other hand, cutting the price in half, and perhaps saving you 50p per week, might represent disaster for thousands of farmers in the developing world, who grow bananas - and barely make a living doing so - and have seen the prices they receive steadily drop over the last decade. These are tough times for the public in Britain, but they are desperate times for poor farmers in countries such as Costa Rica and Ecuador.

Why should we worry about banana producers?
Because banana production is the archetypal example of how agriculture in the developing world can perpetuate social injustice and trap people in poverty. Bananas are the most popular fruit in the world - shoppers spend more than £10bn on them annually, and they are the world's fourth most important crop after rice, wheat and maize.
Banana production is consequently an operation on a gigantic industrial scale and is dominated by just five huge companies, Chiquita (formerly United Fruit), Dole, Del Monte, Noboa and Fyffes, which control 80 per cent of the global trade between them.
They grow bananas in vast monoculture plantations in tropical countries, employing tens of thousands of workers. But, according to the Fairtrade Foundation, many of the workers are paid pittance wages insufficient to provide for their families - less than £1 per day in some cases - for working long hours in very difficult conditions, and often prevented from forming trade unions to protect their rights and improve their working lives.
The situation of small independent banana producers is also precarious, and in the Windward Islands in the Caribbean, which were once the mainstay of Britain's banana supplies, 20,000 out of 25,000 banana farmers have gone out of production since 1992.
Every time the price of bananas in the rich countries falls, there is pressure on the big producers to cut the wages and benefits of their workers to maintain profits, and often impossible pressure on independents to match the low prices. Between 2002 and 2008, supermarket price wars saw the price of loose bananas in the UK slashed by 41 per cent, but Asda's latest price cut is something again.

Why is it different from other price cuts?
Because it takes banana prices to a historically low level, almost certainly below the cost of growing them, picking them and shipping them across the world. The Fairtrade Foundation, which now gives its accreditation to a quarter of the bananas sold in Britain, has been tracking banana retail prices in the UK since 2000 (when they were at 90p per kilo) and the baseline of the graphic it has used was set at 65p, as no-one ever expected prices to fall below that. Now Asda has cut them to 46p - way off the graph.
"We've never seen this," Harriet Lamb, the Fair Trade Federation's executive director, said yesterday."It never even occurred to us we would see prices go this low. This is the lowest level since records began after World War Two, the lowest level in absolute terms ever. It is completely unsustainable. It is ludicrous. It is just Asda playing games. It is also completely pointless, as their rivals will all follow suit. The point is what the long-term impact will be for farmers and workers in the banana industry. It is clearly impossible to cut prices by this much without making the deepest cut of all - to producers' livelihoods."

Bundle Up

Our winter gear has arrived in store and trust me, you will love it. Toboggans, gloves, mittens, scarves, ponchos. Most of these are made in Bolivia, Ecuador, or Nepal, although we just added a few hats from Guatemala to our collection this morning.

The hats and mittens from Ecuador and Bolivia are made by Artesania, a company started 25 years ago by a Columbia grad after he traveled to these two countries and fell in love with the indigenous culture and tradition of descendants of the Incan people.

So cute! We sell these in both children and adult sizes. Talk about a fun Halloween costume.

This poncho and the hat below are made out of banana fiber in Nepal. Approximately one billion tons of banana fiber are thrown away every year; clothes like these put what was formerly waste material to good use. In addition, impoverished people can benefit from making and selling clothes and accessories (i.e. the ones you see pictured below!) made of the banana fiber that is plentiful in their local environment.

Be sure to check out these products in our online store.

News of the Day

Check this out:

Dole Fresh Fruit has reportedly signed a deal with third-party certifier TransFair USA to import bananas and pineapples under the Fairtrade label.

The agreement, reported in The Packer, would make Dole the largest importer of Fairtrade-certified bananas and pineapples in the US.

“Dole will be working closely with TransFair USA on promotions,” Bil Goldfield, communications manager for Dole Fresh Fruit, confirmed.

According to Mr Goldfield, the company started exporting Fairtrade-certified bananas from Ecuador and Peru to Wal-Mart-owned Sam’s Club outlets in August, and plans to extend the project to include Central and South American organic and conventionally grown pineapples in due course.

The volume of Fairtrade products will initially represent only a small percentage of Dole’s annual volume, The Packer reported.

La Paz De Dios and Fair Trade

There's a great organization here in Chattanooga with whom we've had the privilege of working quite frequently over the last couple years. They're known as La Paz de Dios, and they provide all kinds of support services to the local Latino community. As we understand it, their primary aim is to empower Latinos to better and more fruitfully integrate into Chattanooga, both socially and economically. And that's good for them, and for Chattanooga.

We recognize that the past few decades' upsurge in Hispanic immigration into America has become a flashpoint for controversy at all levels of politics, business, education, social relations, and more. But what no amount or quality of argument will change is that, right now, there are a lot of people living in our country, and our city, that have come here from Latin America, legally or illegally, in search of better lives for themselves and their loved ones back home. La Paz reaches out to this community and provides English training, job counseling, translation services for school enrollment, and good old-fashioned volunteer service work to get people plugged in and on their feet. And that's probably just a fraction of the whole list of things they're up to. It's community and economic development mixed with compassion, on a local level.

I can't remember the exact numbers, but I remember reading in the New York Times in early 2007 that the World Bank (I think) estimated the total amount of remittances (that's people working abroad and sending money back home) to outweigh the total amount of official government aid by a margin of billions of dollars. Many foreign workers that come to the US are here because they are trying to support their families back home. While La Paz works to get those that come here plugged in, the work we do here at World Next Door helps bolster those communities abroad through fair trade.

For anyone just now finding out about us and what we do, Fair Trade is the name of a business practice that guarantees fair wages and safe working conditions to farmers, artists, and craftsmen living in countries where economic exploitation, or a dearth of opportunity, is prevalent. It's business conducted in a dignifying way, and it's a way for us as Western consumers to leverage our buying power to chip away at global poverty with each purchase.

Many of the products we sell in our store come from countries where many migrant workers that have come to the US originate -- places like Guatemala, Mexico, and more. From now until Christmas, we're teaming up with La Paz to attack both ends of the Latino challenge.

Shop with us online at http://shop.worldnextdoormarket.com/ and enter the following discount code at checkout:

lapaz

Instead of receiving a discount yourself, we'll make a donation to La Paz. 10% of your purchase price will impact Chattanooga's Latino population, and 50% (the cost of the goods we sell) goes directly to the community where it was produced. The other 40% will go to pay our bills and taxes.

On the left-hand menu you'll see an option called "By Country." This will let you browse our products based on where they were produced. While the 10% donation will apply no matter what country's products you purchase, if you pick one from a Hispanic country you'll be supporting:

1. A Latino community overseas, attacking poverty and helping to chip away at the incentive to emigrate;
2. The work of La Paz, helping to engage Chattanooga's Latino community to become more integrated and productive in our area, and;
3. Us, a locally-owned and operated small business.

And shipping is always free!

From our newsletter...

PHD Indoor Frisbee
Made in Guatemala
$9.99 Regular Edition
$14.99 Sport Edition

These things are too cool not to mention. These hand-knit flying discs are produced in a fair trade workshop in Guatemala, and are safe enough to use indoors! Bright and colorful, they're good for copious rainy day fun!

The Sport Edition is made from slightly heavier material for more weight and distance.

There are far too many colors for us to sell these online, so if you can't make it to our Chattanooga store, make your inquiry by phone: 423.634.7799