Ten Thousand Villages of Austin’s Blog

Ten Thousand Villages is proud to support local non-profit organizations by hosting benefit shopping nights.  This month, all of our benefit nights will be helping local dog rescue, wellness, and training organizations.  You and your four-legged canine friends are welcome to stop in to shop.  As an added bonus, our fabulous sponsor, Bark for Peace, will be providing vegan, organic treats for your pets! Also available will be greeting cards from Verysupercool with all of your favorite dog expressions!

Stop in any evening next week, May 12-15, and your purchase between 5pm-9pm will benefit the following organizations:

May 12 - Lucky Mutts Mixed Breed Rescue
May 13 - Chain Free Austin
May 14 - Schrodi Memorial Training Scholarship Fund
May 15 - Austin German Shepherd Dog Rescue

Our neighbor, Rivers & Reefs, will stay open late for last minute dog food shopping May 12-15!  Hope to see you and your pups in the store! …Taylor

You know how sometimes, someone seems to come along at just the right moment and provide you with exactly what you need? We usually don’t even have to tell them when we need them. They instinctively know when to be there. Someone even created a day of recognition for these folks. It’s known as Be An Angel Day, celebrated on August 22 each year.

Well, we here at Villages of Austin have had our own angel these days. His name is John Egan, and he lives right here in Austin, TX. He has written stories about Ten Thousand Villages of Austin and as a result, has generated a lot of great publicity for our store and for fair trade. He recently donated a brand-new all-in-one copier/scanner/fax machine to the store. We cannot thank him enough!

Saving the day is a full-time job, but John manages to find time to run the company he founded, UpWord Communications. He is a master wordsmith, and he uses his skills to help magazines, businesses, and non-profit organizations promote themselves effectively.

Thank you again, John, for all that you do!

Sincerely,
Ten Thousand Villages of Austin

It IS easy being green! Just ask the people who represented over 150 green businesses and organizations at the Austin Green Living Expo, held April 18-20 in Austin, TX. Our volunteers were instrumental in the process, helping us create the fantastic booth you see below…

We made lots of new friends, including Bark for Peace, a great organization committed to sustainable living “while loving and learning from dogs.” What a fun group!

We also connected with Katz Coffee. They can brew one mean cup o’ joe. Their goal is “perfection in every cup,” which starts at the source by using fair trade certified, “green” beans. You can even buy online. Might I recommend the Bat City Blend? A tribute to the great city of Austin, TX. Check them out!

Africa Bound, another new friend of Ten Thousand Villages, conducts tours all over Africa. They also sell neem oil and are in the process of creating an African village in Cedar Creek. Check back for more details!

The Expo was a great way to see how easy it can be to go green. There are so many ways to incorporate environmentally-friendly living into your lifestyle, you just have to find the ones that are right for you!

Ten Thousand Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth. We hope you’ll continue to spread our mission of fair trade. To those who purchased hand-made items from the artisans we work with, we hope you’re enjoying them! We were all sad to see the lion leave the store, but we’re confident he’s enjoying his new home.

Hope to see you in the store soon! …Taylor

Rain and Mud, two words that best describe the first 5 days of our Villages adventure at the 36th Annual Kerrville Folk Festival. These two words resulted in two nights of cancelled craft sales, low attendance during the entire weekend and lots of fun with mud -both on foot and on wheels!

Unfortunately, sales were not as good as expected because of the impact of “Texas Deluge 2007”, but our beautiful booth stayed dry. Most of the Kerrvers that braved the rain to shop with us were excited to see that Ten Thousand Villages had become a part of the Festival. The other shoppers were glad to find out about our mission and look forward to visiting us in Austin and Houston.

We are happy to be a part of this Texas tradition rain or shine. The Kerrville staff and volunteers have been nothing but the most supportive team of any event we’ve attended.

With the second weekend of the festival on the horizon, we have high hopes for beautiful weather, beautiful people and beautiful sales!

For now, I’ll put my raincoat “on call”.

What a delightful idea.  A children’s book that tells the fair trade story.

This is a new item that we are proud to be carrying in our store during our celebrations on World Fair Trade Day, Saturday, May 12.  Zapizapu Crosses the Sea:

“…take us  on a journey that simplifies the concept of international trade and personifies those involved around the world from grower to consumer.  In its rawness, we discover that the simple yet important concept of “being fair” is important for children and grown ups alike.”

I hope to post a Q&A with the author, Diane Abad Vergara, soon.

Technorati Tags: zapizapu, vergara, fairtrade, education, book

:Update–See below abstract of the e-mail update sent today, April 30, by Rob Everts, executive director, Equal Exchange (full text of the letter here):

In less than a week 3,150 individuals and 450 organizations signed on to the letter.

The USDA assured us that they had heard from us, and you, “loud and clear” and that in “two or three days” they would issue a statement that they thought would make us “happy.” They would not share any more etails other than to offer a little more explanation of how they perceived the issue.

# # #

I’m late to the news that last month the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a ruling that tightens organic certification requirements to such a degree that it pretty much curtails the ability of small grower co-ops to produce organic coffee, plus organic bananas, cocoa, sugar, and spices. (Good primer by Salon.com.)

To be certificated organic, a typical farm is subjected to an annual USDA inspection. However, given the immense logistical demands of inspecting thousands of farms in the developing world, a provision was made for an organic inspector to randomly inspect 20 percent of a co-op. Subsequently, the grower co-op would be responsible for self-policing for the remainder of the year; the following year, an inspector would inspect another 20 percent of the co-op–after five years, all farms in the co-op would be inspected.

The ruling will put an end to this group organic certification provision because it calls for individual inspection of each farm, a financial burden that almost all small-scale growers will not be able to bear.

Equal Exchange has a well-articulated rational against the ruling and a request for co-signers on a letter (PDF) to be delivered to the USDA. Unfortunately the deadline for signing is today, April 24. However, at this time, the Organic Consumers Association has a similiar letter you can sign here.

Yesterday’s New York Times ran a human interest story about fair trade coffee in Chiapas. My two takeaways from the story:

• Raise of fair trade coffee prices to $1.51 per pound. “The price for Fair Trade organic coffee has long been fixed at $1.41 a pound and this year it will rise to $1.51 compared with the market price of about $1.08.”
• Expanding list of NGOs acting as middleman between growers and corporations.

Any discussion of fair trade coffee in the media is encouraging; but after reading the article thrice, I was still left with the lingering question of, “So, does the fair trade coffee model work?”

The thing is, fair trade coffee certification is not without its shortcomings. And I submit to you that any system based on “trust and respect” (one of Equal Exchange’s fair trade commitment) is inherently more difficult to quantify and standardize because it is bias towards basic human needs and relationships.

The commitment of fair trade coffee certification is largely three-fold:

• Minimum market prices for organic coffee;
• Ecologically sustainable farming practices; and
• Democratically-run farming cooperatives

As noted in the NYT article, a coffee farmer is now able to afford to send his daughters to college–an investment that will only be reaped in the long run–but, as also duly noted, fair trade cannot “solve all the problems of inequality here.”

And here lies the rub: An innate expectation that because fair trade is “good” it ought to alleviate poverty, make things alright, and level the playing field. Guess what? That’s not what fair trade delivers–at least not on a large scale.

The commitments of fair trade are a blend of practical and aspirational–most importantly, it serves as a lifeline for many farmers and families seeking better alternatives and opportunities. (And it takes the good works of many more unsung heroes in the coffee chain to support and sustain the fair trade model.) However, it is not appropriate to expect fair trade to be a long-term economical solution for the masses. Rather than comparing fair trade to insurance, I’d suggest that it is closer to on the job training that opens doors to different–likely better–opportunities given the stable wages and business skills acquired.

Bottom line for coffee drinkers: Educate yourself on the issues (here) and do ask for fairly-traded coffee at your local joint for your dollars will benefit those in the coffee chain (see below). Additionally, realize that just because something isn’t fair trade certified doesn’t mean that it is “evil.”