Eco-friendly, organic, energy-saving and all-natural- These labels have become a part of the everyday vernacular of our consumer-driven culture. It’s hip and trendy, so of course we eat it up to stay trim in this health-crazed society. And all in the name of “going green”- an umbrella term to describe someone or something environmentally conscious. Amongst the other cringe-worthy phenomena of our celebrity-obsessed culture, “going green” is one of the few generational trends we don’t have to be ashamed of. Fair Trade is a movement that stretches its environmental conscience to include social justice ideals.
As a handsomely hand-carved soapstone figure of a lanky elephant was raised in the air for group inspection, I couldn’t resist examining the myriad hand-made Kenyan jewelry and Ghanaian chocolates organized on a long side table draped with tropical orange and green colored Ugandan fabric. Where was I? Not a bazaar, a marketplace, or flea market, but in a meager 200-square-foot corner room meant for storage space with an excessive amount of fluorescent lighting, nearly cheapening the alluring items.
I continued to survey the crowded room brimming with artifacts as the group took inventory and tagged merchandise for their Valentine’s Day Sale the next day. I almost forgot I wasn’t visiting the Students for Fair Trade (SFT) store/office to shop but to research the fairly new organization still in its developmental stage, forming its identity.
SFT at Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus is an all-inclusive label for the organization. It is an academic and community service learning class (titled Fair Trade and Microfinance), a club organization, and a small business. SFT began in 2006 when Professor Kate Combellick, PhD. began teaching a College of Business Administration (CBA) class under the International Service Learning Program, which will be phased out next year and become part of Fordham’s Community Service Program. Dr. Combellick is the Program Director of the International Service Learning Program. She’s approachable, high-spirited, and down-to-earth.
“We provide business, not charity,” Dr. Combellick proclaims as she stares intently into the video camera. Coincidently, I was not the only outsider attending the class meeting that particular day. Two members of the Audio Visual Club were there to gather footage for STF’s documentary in the works. The AV Club charged a mere fifty dollars for their services. Combellick provided a brief overview of STF’s mission without the assistance of notes. Not once did she fumble for words. Her impromptu, almost stream-of-consciousness speech demonstrated her breadth of knowledge and personal faith in Fair Trade. As I scanned the mid-size conference room, I didn’t see the usual shuffling of papers, doodling, or glazed eyes. No one was bored. This was not your average, run of the mill college class. The nine students, who all competed to take the class, have the privilege of learning practical business application in a non-conventional classroom setting. Anyone can opt to drop out of the class at any given time- a Combellick rule to ensure optimal commitment to the organization.
According to SFT’s brochure, Fair Trade is “an organized social movement and market-based model of international trade which promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas relayed to the production of a wide variety of products” including handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, and fresh fruit. Fair Trade integrates local merchants and farmers in the global marketplace, where mass production and corporations dominate business.
SFT follows the same goals of Fair Trade, upholding its social ideals. Erika Pineda, one of the nine members of the club (which calls itself a team) says she “dreams about our Fair Trade methodology spreading like a virus throughout every university in the world.” Pineda manages the club’s marketing, which includes creating posters, brochures, and updating the fashion blog. In addition to the fashion blog, which showcases artsy photographs of Fordham students modeling Fair Trade jewelry, SFT has five other web pages including accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, a blog on Word Press and a dot org that provides general facts and contact information. The members of SFT are making use of every free of-charge outlet on the Internet to market the brand, the products, the mission and the events. This year’s sales events include the aforementioned Valentine’s Day sale called Fall in Love with Fair Trade and Love Fairly: A Chocolate and Coffee Tasting Event.
SFT’s mission statement encourages “economic expansion in developing countries by empowering fair trade businesses to increase profits and by creating solutions to achieve social justice and reduce poverty through the application of business skills and commitment to being men and women for others.”
SFT is not your average “fashion for a cause” charity. Technically it’s not a non-profit organization, since it directly distributes a sum of its profits as micro-loans to their local artisan partners in Kenya which include Nyabigena Carvers Cooperative located in Nyamarabe, a small village in Kisii and Trinity Jewellery located in Mathare, one of the poorest areas on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Nyabigena Carvers Cooperative is a civic-minded enterprise, which has sponsored a women’s literacy program and an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. The artisans can practically carve soapstone, a naturally occurring material, into almost anything including Fordham’s mascot, the Ram, as suggested by Dr. Combellick.
During spring break, Dr. Combellick and the class will travel to Nairobi to give the Cooperative more ideas for carvings, buy new merchandise, and train their artisan partners on to use QuickBooks, an accounting software, to better manage their finances.
Sean O’Connor, another team member who is charge of expanding SFT to other schools, suggested bringing a sample pair of cufflinks without a mechanism, to use as a model to create a soapstone version. O’Connor says “cufflinks would expand clientele to include more men.” The idea has profit potential since most of the merchandise is jewelry meant for women.
Also, Dr. Combellick feels the trip will give the team the opportunity to see the poverty first hand. Dr. Combellick has asked each student to prepare a mini-lesson plan for younger children to practice English. Community service such as this exemplifies SFT’s general concern for social justice. The business is utilized as a vehicle to provide financial assistance to artisans, in effort to stimulate their local economy, where living conditions are substandard and the people have limited access to employment, education, and basic needs.
The broad scope of STF’s mission is daunting and ambitious, but the team stays focuses on running their business as efficiently and profitably as possible. STF is a work in progress at the moment. Its affiliation with Fordham is not altogether concrete. Combellick told the class of the faculty-circulated rumors of her pocketing money from the business, a reason why she has decided not to register her name under STF’s new Bethex account. The majority of the team would like STF to be independent of Fordham, in order to have more control of the business and avoid the bureaucratic constraints of the University.
Despite the financial and administrative quibbles, the team as a whole remains optimistic, especially since their trip to Kenya is nearing. Currently, STF is working on putting together selling packages for individual distribution, creating updated brochures, and starting an official store website to easily purchase products and manage inventory. STF seems like a pebble on the shoreline but its commitment to the Fair Trade movement is inspiring and worthy of recognition.
Fair Trade Office
Kenya Trip
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