Making Waves: Fair Trade at Greater Allegheny

     I recently met with the Environmental Club on my campus, and introduced the idea of bringing Fair Trade to Penn State Greater Allegheny. The response I got was positive, and now the club president and the members and I are trying to make it happen.

We sat down and talked about how we would get our campus Fair Trade certification started. We are using Penn State Brandywine as an example, because they are located in Media, PA (the first Fair Trade city in the US) and were awarded Fair Trade certification in May 2012. They have everything listed on their website, including the process they went through and their proposal for certification. They continue to update their site whenever they have special events.

This is a small pamphlet of guidelines from Fair Trade Colleges & Universities explaining the guidelines and criteria for becoming certified: http://fairtradeu.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/FT-Colleges-Universities-Intro-Criteria.pdf

The overall mission of the Fair Trade Colleges & Universities campaign is stated as:

The mission of Fair Trade Colleges and Universities is to inspire institutions of higher learning to support the Fair Trade movement in its efforts to seek equity in trade and promote sustainable development. Fair Trade Colleges and Universities harness the power of higher education in the United States to both raise awareness among students, faculty, and staff about the benefits of Fair Trade, and leverage the significant institutional buying power to purchase Fair Trade products. Achieving Fair Trade status means securing institutional commitment to embed Fair Trade principles and practices within administrative/procurement policy and the social and intellectual fabric of academic communities.

One of the first things I have in mind for our Fair Trade goals is to host a Holiday Bazaar in the Student Community Center at Greater Allegheny. I want to show people what Fair Trade is about, that it's not expensive, that it's better for your health, and overall, it's better for the world. Getting people to buy Fair Trade for the holidays is difficult when they don't know where to go to make purchases, so I plan to bring Fair Trade to Penn State Greater Allegheny. The Environmental Club members are already excited and want to order from the Equal Exchange fundraising catalogs I brought in.

This past weekend, I was at an event for my internship, and managed to take some pictures of an Equal Exchange booth that was selling Fair Trade coffee, tea, chocolate, and fruit products. I tried some coffee and it was yummy!

Front of the table: Sign up sheets, gift baskets, and info cards.

Side of booth: Different coffees, dried fruit and snacks.

So this is something that I want to replicate, to make students, staff and faculty interested in on campus. Beyond that, our plan is to bring Fair Trade bananas, coffee, tea, and other products on campus and feature Fair Trade in the curricula of some courses, as part of the ongoing education of the movement. 

It will take a lot of work, talking to different people, approval from different administrators, but hopefully we will be able to move forward to becoming a certified Fair Trade campus. Greater Allegheny is known as one of the most diverse campuses in the Penn State system, and this would go towards bringing Pittsburgh around as a Fair Trade city.