When Shlayma Shamberg traveled to Ghana this past summer with American Jewish World Service, a nonprofit organization based out of New York City that provides small grants to NGOs and service programs in the developing world, the purpose of her trip was to learn about a foreign culture and engage in service there. The main project consisted of constructing, alongside the village locals, a community library located next to the local elementary and middle school in Kpeme, a small village in the Volta region of the country. Yet during her seven weeks with this program, she also got to talking with a lot of the neighboring local inhabitants, many of which were small cocoa farmers. Through her conversations with the farmers, she constantly heard the same story: they produced cocoa, sold it on the market, and received extremely low revenue for their product. The prices they sold the cocoa for were so low that it was barely possible to sustain their own farms.
Ghana, the number one exporter of cocoa, is no stranger to the disadvantages of the world market, nor those of another major factor in developing countries,debt. Many Ghanaians rely on agricultural products to make a living. Yet "instead of benefiting from that arrangement," says Shamberg, "they are being disadvantaged from it." The low prices the cocoa is sold at, however, in turn make it impossible for it to be processed within the country, and the price of the final product when it re-enters the country -chocolate- is too high for those very same producers to even afford purchasing it.
After her conversations with the farmers and her experience working with the locals, Shamberg realized that while the words "fair trade" are a hot phrase with regards to products such as coffee, the same issue arises with many other products as well, such as cotton, sugar, tea, and in this case, cocoa. With this new perspective on international trade, Shamberg returned to the United States, where she educated herself further about fair trade organizations. She says of her experience,"[Ghana] is trying to work itself into Western ideals, democracy, capitalism...They see this as the only option they have. I don't know if people are educated enough to know if there are other options unless it is presented to them."
Shamberg then decided to call attention to this option on the consumer side as well by bringing awareness of Fair Trade through an event to Goucher's campus. As a new member of Goucher Hillel's Tzedek, social justice, committee, she wanted to get support from Goucher's Hillel, but make it inclusive to other groups on campus as well. Shamberg first solicited the help of Tzedek's chair Dov Liverman to present the idea to the rest of Hillel's board. Hillel then began planning an event, and along with additional logistical help from WILPF, Amnesty International and other individuals, Shamburg worked out the details and logistics of a Fair Trade Party.
The Fair Trade Party was held at the Gopher Hole on Sunday, November 20, from 9:00-11:30 pm. Featuring fair trade and organic chili, coffee, and tea, the event also featured musical entertainment from Katie Callahan, Goucher's own accapella group Red Hot Blue, and the band Funk in the Trunk. There were also opportunities to win prizes, buy fair trade holiday gifts and other fair trade goods. Many students helped in the process of preparing for the party and volunteered time at the party to make sure everything ran smoothly. The Gopher Hole remained packed for the duration of the party, a constant flow of chili and beverages running throughout the night.
Several organizations helped in funding and donating food and other items to the event in order to educate students and raise money for fair trade. SERRV International, a nonprofit alternative trade and development organization, donated a $100 gift certificate to purchase goods from their A Greater Gift store, which carries exclusively fair trade items of all kinds such as jewelry and scarves. The gift certificate was used toward door prizes and some of the food items for the event. In addition, A Greater Gift offered ten percent of the proceeds from the consignment gift sales, which will be donated towards fair trade organizations, such as TransFair USA. This organization provided a lot of information and resources for the event, much of which donned the table of the organic/fair trade bake sale held in Pearlstone prior to the party to raise money and awareness of the event. All the tea for the event came from Organic India, a company committed to supporting sustainable organic farming and ethical business practices with small farmers in India. Additional funding also came from the organization that originally sent Shamberg to Ghana, American Jewish World Service. These organizations put into practice the mechanisms of fair trade throughout the world. For instance, Divine Chocolate, sold at the event, works with a farmers' cooperative in Ghana, which owns one third of the shares of the company and receives an agreed price for the cocoa, thus removing the "middlemen" often seen in a free market system, which can complicate trade relationships and add additional costs in transporting and selling goods. The cooperative also has a say in setting environmental and labor standards.
Says Shamberg of the success of the well-attended Fair Trade Party and of her plans for more activities following this initial event, "The focus was to get awareness out...[and afterwards to] organize more educational events through a film or speaker about this and other social justice issues and possibly form a student group that works with these issues."She hopes this future group could work closely with similar groups such as WILPF or Amnesty International.
Other students shared enthusiasm about the event. Says Sarah Abdelnaby, '07, "The Fair Trade Party was a huge success; it helped to bring to campus a consciousness of a social justice issue that, while already important to students, may have not necessarily been discussed widely." Student Anna Lapera, '08, agrees, stating, "I think that increasing awareness about Fair Trade and trade in general is so vital, because what we buy and where we buy it from can affect workers anywhere in the free trade zones and beyond. As young consumers, it is so important to know what we buy and in what condition it was made."
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