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Fair Trade Challenge encourages youth
to work for economic justice

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee has launched a new fair trade initiative to inspire young people to become activists in support of economic justice by encouraging consumers to make buying choices that improve the lives of workers around the world.

The Fair Trade Challenge is mobilizing young activists to spread the word in their schools, churches and communities that consumers can make a difference by using their purchasing power to insure that farmers and producers get a fair price for their products, a price that covers the cost to produce their goods and insures a living wage for workers.

"The Fair Trade Challenge is a way for youth and young adults to play a larger role in implementing fair trade in their high schools, universities or within their congregations," said Nguyen Weeks, UUSC's program associate for youth. "By becoming fair trade activists, young people can join the growing movement of students and others who are encouraging their peers to put their values into action for social justice."

The challenge was unveiled at the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Fort Worth, Texas, and participants will be promoting fair trade in high schools, universities and churches around the country in the coming months.

The new initiative builds on our experience over the last several years with the UUSC Coffee Project. In partnership with the fair trade company Equal Exchange, UUSC organizes Unitarian Universalists and UU congregations around the country to use fairly traded coffee, tea and cocoa during their Sunday morning social hours and in their homes.

Today, more than 600 congregations—over 60 percent of all UU congregations—are participating in the program, thus ensuring that low-income farmers in Latin America, Africa and Asia receive a fair price for their products. In addition to helping to provide small coffee farmers with sufficient income to meet their basic needs, UUSC receives a small percentage of the proceeds of sales to provide grants for human rights initiatives in the coffee-growing regions.

The Fair Trade Challenge provides a number of participant-coordinated activities that introduce the idea of fair trade, its impact on producers and the power that young consumers have to join the fair trade community in ensuring that producers earn a living wage. They include getting schools and community groups to use fair trade products, organizing taste tests, conducting surveys, and writing letters to local newspapers.

For more information and to sign up for the challenge, e-mail fairtradechallenge@uusc.org or call 800.388.3920, ext. 201.

by Dick Campbell
Posted June 24, 2005