Turkey Day the Fair Trade Way

Thanksgiving time is a busy time of year. Friends and family travel cross the country and sometimes cross the globe just to be with one another. Households who normally order pizza and gather around the television suddenly break out the fine china and gather around the dinner table instead. It's a great time of year filled with food, family, and...fair trade?

Some of you might be wondering "How can I have a fair trade

Thanksgiving?" While it might be easy to make the switch to fair trade coffee, or buy fair trade products once in a while ,doing an entire fair trade dinner with all the "fixins" can be a tad more complicated. But let's not fret! Here are some helpful tips to make your eating ethical.

1. Dinnerware

One way to incorporate fair trade into Thanksgiving is with your dishware and table settings. Using plates and bowls and table cloths like those that can be found at The Welcome Mat will not only make your family dinner beautiful and festive but ethical as well. Salad tongs, napkin rings, you name it, there

are fair trade options for any fancy get together.

2. Food

Fair trade isn't exclusive to just coffee and chocolate. There are lots of fair trade goods that can be used in your holiday cooking.
Sugar- For all of your baking and sweetening needs fair trade sugar is available. As are different kinds of fruit! However, stores that carry these items are limited. What you can do to help push the cause further in your community is request fair trade options in your stores.
Spice- While they may not be as well known, fair trade herbs and spices are available. Pepper, turmeric, and even cinnamon can be found at places such as Mountain Rose Herbs and Frontier Natural Products Co-op.
Everything Nice- Preparing your fair trade holiday will be a breeze with fair trade olive oil, and what is a better pairing than fair trade dinner with a glass of fair trade wine? Fair trade wine is developing quickly, as is fair trade liquor.

3. Football
Many families like to kick back and watch the football game after their dinner, but a lot of families like to actually play a good game of family football as well. For these families fair trade footballs are an ethical reason to tackle one another.

Fair trade isn't just a cause that can be embraced in our every day lives, but during special occasions as well. Just remember that when its hard to find a turkey or another primary ingredient with a fair trade certified logo on its packaging the next best thing is to buy local. Buying produce that has been grown locally in the USA increases the likelihood that it was produced ethically.

While fair trade may not be the picture of a traditional Thanksgiving, there is certainly nothing wrong with giving it a shot. Every family has their own traditions during the holiday season, but there is nothing wrong with starting a new tradition by doing your Turkey Day the fair trade way.

Coffee with a Purpose

The weather is getting cold and will only get colder. There are a few people who love this kind of weather, but for most of us we just want to curl up beneath a blanket with a hot drink.  And what is the most popular hot drink in America?  Coffee!  It’s not only the most popular hot drink, but it is more than likely the most well known fair trade product.  
Coffee is grown in many locations around the world.  One particular fair trade organization that The Welcome Mat supports, Singing Rooster gets all of its coffee from Haiti.
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and there are many factors contributing to that fact.  Because wood is the only available fuel in Haiti, and there is a constant demand for it, over the last 200 years the trees of Haiti have been cut down and not replanted, causing massive soil erosion which is detrimental to agriculture.  In addition to this there is a corrupt government and lack of sufficient education of the populace.  All of these things and more have contributed to the poverty of Haiti.  Poverty is like a deep hole, its going to take a lot of work to get out of it, otherwise you’ll be stuck there forever.

Singing Rooster has been using coffee as part of a long term solution for Haitians to get out of poverty.  Haiti has had a long history with coffee, making it a great place to start.  Around 1770 the Jesuits were spreading coffee plants in Mexico and the Caribbean islands to be grown in plantations.  By 1788, Haiti, at the time a slave nation, was providing half of the worlds coffee.  The Haitians led themselves in the first successful slave revolution in 1804 and coffee continued to be one of their leading exports.  By 1949 Haiti was the third largest coffee exporter in the world.  However their contribution to the market began to decline, and eventually the Haitians lost the skills.

So how does Singing Rooster use coffee to help Haiti?  Like many other fair trade organizations, Singing Rooster is providing jobs, and providing the Haitians with some of the skills that they have lost that they can help themselves out of poverty, but are giving much higher than fair trade prices.  They continue to create new markets for the coffee to allow for continual production, and then return proceeds to Haiti in the form of grants which is why The Welcome Mat is happy to have Singing Rooster coffee for sale on our shelves.

So drinking a hot drink on a cold day can be about so much more than a moment of comfort.  If that drink is Singing Rooster coffee, it’s about a better and brighter future for Haiti.  

You can purchase Singing Rooster on our website at www.thewelcomemat.org!