The Media Fair Trade Committee Executive Director and our summer intern recently attended the Equal Exchange Annual Summit in Massachusetts. Equal Exchange is one of the most authentic fair trade companies, and supports strictly small family farms that produce coffee, tea, cacao, avocados, nuts, and the bananas you might have eaten after running the Media Five Miler.
It was a fantastic feeling to gather together with around 170 attendees from around the country that all care so much about people, and Equal Exchange and their mission to support the producers that are trying to make a living on their farms while providing us with delicious healthy food. They are a worker owned cooperative and have created an alternative trade system, or economy, that is fair for everyone. This is so different from the system we know where many businesses exploit their workers and harm our planet to maximize corporate profits.
And, they have been very successful. They started with coffee in the 1980s, in Nicaragua, in solidarity with the Sandanista revolution. It was also a time where large industrial agriculture, reliant on many chemical inputs, was becoming the norm, and high quality coffee was becoming popular. An interesting connection to Media is that Hal Taussig and his Untours Foundation, in Media, was the first investor when they began their experiment in alternate trade. The Media Fair Trade Committee was started by Hal who had the idea that if all of Media’s restaurants served Fair Trade coffee it would have a huge positive impact on so many people struggling around the world. Equal Exchange is thriving today and so is Media and our Fair Trade Committee. Please continue to buy Fair Trade products at your favorite Media shops and restaurants and ask shop owners to offer more. Reach out to mediafairtrade@gmail.com for help.