PR for Fair Trade!

Today has been an exciting day for me as a student. Our fair trade organization on campus has just become an official organization at the University! We even have a new listserv now!

A good friend of mine introduced me to the concept of fair trade after she attended a leadership conference last summer. She became a member of an important fair trade group known as Oxfam. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/.

Oxfam is an agency dedicated to ending world poverty. One of its biggest promotions is the idea of fair trade world-wide. Moreover, many may look at world poverty and think about starving children in some country 10,000 miles away, but farmers all over the world (and this includes the U.S.) can't feed their families because of the abuse of subsidies today.

You can probably relate to this by thinking about where you plan on making your next grocery shopping trip. Are you going to go to the farmer's market for vegetables, or are you looking for the cheapest prices at your local grocery store? These small decisions are forcing many farmers to live in poverty.

By encouraging the production and sale of fair trade products, I think that the program is steadily growing, and I am glad to be a part of it. I've also been designated the official PR person for our group, so there's experience to be had! Has anyone heard of this program or know of an organization within your vicinity using effective PR in the area of fair trade? I'd like to look at what others have done so far.