Weather and Fair Trade

I swear today we had the most beautiful weather yet this year.

It was the chilly type of weather that makes you wear a jacket all day, but the sky was blue, and the air was crisp and rich. The surroundings were orange and brown and blue and the breeze just yearns for a cup of hot something-or-other. To top it all off, the leaves on the ground were perfectly crunchy.

Honestly though, there's not much else to write about for today.

Oh! Just kidding.

A speaker came to our school today (during chapel) to talk about how so many of our products and food and other things we take for granted have stories behind them. With each fruit we bite into, coffee we drink, and shirt we put on, we share a connection with the person who picked that fruit, picked and/or ground those coffee beans, or sewed that shirt. However, most of these people are being horribly treated for the work that they do. In an effort for companies to make the biggest profit, people who are just trying to get by on the bare minimum are being completely shortchanged to the point where normal life is not possible.

She then talked about a group that is working to find the companies and products that do allow their workers to get a fair price. These products are a little more expensive for consumers, but they allow each worker to have the very, very bare minimum wage that at least allows them to feed their families and gain some sort of shelter over their heads. One family that is paid fair prices, she told us, could finally afford a tiny cardboard shack. Cardboard. Think about it: if one family could finally afford cardboard walls with fair wages, how badly off must all those other workers be?

She encouraged us to make a small difference in order to look out for our brothers and sisters all over the world: Find those products. There is a label on products that says "Fair for Life" (see links below). It costs a bit more, but it's only fair: there are people who worked hard for our simple and trivial pleasures, and they deserve something more than a couple cents per shirt or pound of chocolate. Little by little, by showing our support for fair treatment, maybe we can send a message to the companies who's workers can barely survive: It's time for a fair price.

The organization that's helped spear-head the whole operation, and a label to look for

Interested?  here's a link.

And another, more coffee specific

I personally hope to adopt these standards into my own life. I'm not sure how to start, but I'm going to really, really try. I can't stand the thought of taking advantage of somebody else who I don't even know who doesn't deserve anything of the sort.

I hope this was inspiring to you too! Enjoy your autumn weather!

~Rachel~