Trade As One

Our partners over at Canaan Fair Trade just sent out a newsletter, and this soup caught our eye. They do amazing work farming some of the oldest olive trees in the world, and treating everyone they employ with dignity and respect. It’s a great product and a great story, and we’re proud to partner with them. If you need some fair trade olive oil, you can get some here. So, get cracking on making this soup and let us know how it tastes!

This is a wonderful Palestinian soup – thick, colorful, and filling. Serves 6-8. In Palestine, soups are often a meal in themselves, accompanied by Arabic bread.

Chickpea and Fava Bean Soup

1 cup fava beans, rinsed and soaked overnight
4 Tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large (28 ounce) can tomatoes, chopped, and juice
¼ cup cilantro, minced
pinch of cayenne pepper
8 cups water
1 can (19 ounce) chickpeas
2 potatoes, diced
1 ½ teaspoons oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Rinse the fava beans and leave to soak overnight. (You can use canned beans and skip the soaking and the 2 hours of simmer.) Heat oil in large pot, saute onions and garlic until soft. Add tomatoes, cilantro, and cayenne pepper. Cook down for 10 minutes. Add water and tomato juice, bring to boil, add fava beans. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours (if using dried beans). Add the chickpeas and potatoes, reboil then simmer for 30 minutes. Add oregano (rub it between your palms into the soup), and season to taste. Ladle into bowls and serve immediately.

I believe that faith communities are at a critical juncture at this time in recent history. Will they grasp the significance of the seismic shifts occurring in western capitalism and lead the way in aligning people’s beliefs with a vision for how God intended this world to function, or will they just ambulance chase people from the wreckage? Will they be able to lead a revolution in simpler living, more generous redistribution of global wealth and in ethical consumption and investment? Is there a way that they can show that markets can operate beyond flip flopping between the human emotions of greed and fear?

Here is how fair trade might play its part. Imagine ten years from now

• Thousands of churches and millions of individuals engaged in redirecting a small proportion of their spending away from large corporations and buying products that they need, but which are made by the poorest of the poor, the abused, the sick, the former slave.
• That for every person who attends church in America $6 per annum of revenue is derived – that would be about $600 million of purchasing that creates approximately 60,000 jobs.
• That with the fair trade premiums that flow back to the poor as a result, thousands of deep bore wells have been dug, hundreds of schools and medical clinics have been set up. Over the course of 10 years complete transformation of entire communities has taken place. 
• That all this is achieved without any philanthropic donations and no additional spending over and above what already takes place
• Imagine that this movement is so effective that mainstream retailers instead of just dabbling in fair trade are now taking out primetime TV adverts positioning themselves as fair trade vendors
• Imagine 75% of the population in America know about and occasionally purchase fair trade
• That this large number of people, motivated to change their own purchasing behavior, has spoken prophetically to the marketplace. That they have modeled a way of engaging in commerce that is not solely based on rational self interest but that instead it is modeled upon the golden rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is as good a definition of fairness as you will get.

Is it crazy to dream like this? Maybe. But I have already seen it happen. Through church channels, Traidcraft in the UK derive about $6 per person that attends church in that country. Mainstream retailers advertise on TV as fair trade vendors. 76% of the public know what fair trade is. Imagine what will happen when American consumers actively engage their conscience in how they consume. Fair trade is only a part of the solution to the brokenness of a system that we see all around us. But it is an immediate, easy and effective way to engage.
I think we’re seeing the beginning. It is deeply encouraging to see the movement that Trade as One is witnessing, particularly in churches like Willow Creek in Chicago, Cornerstone in Livermore CA, Cornerstone in Simi Valley CA, and in churches across Texas in the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

Nathan George
Founder, Trade as One

Our good friend Bart Edwards runs Hagar on Time in Cambodia. They produce many of the beautiful bags we sell here, (you can see their products here). At our event with Willow Creek Community Church last month, each person who placed an order received one of these luggage tags, and many of the folks at Willow Creek purchased Hagar bags. Bart recorded this message as a thank you. It’s a nice look in to their factory, and a welcome reminder that the purchasing decisions we make make every day have a direct impact in the developing world. Take a look:

We’ve begun our first round of interviews with our summer internship applicants, and we’re all pretty excited to get started. We never seem to suffer from a lack of things to do, so it will be great to get some interns in here to help.
So far the quality of the applicants has been superb, and the people we’re interviewing are both talented and passionate. And in light of their many talents, we’re not going to be giving them boring jobs (no one will be making copies or making coffee runs). We’ve got significant projects that will go a long way towards our success this year, and we’re going to trust our interns to run point.
Should be an amazing summer, as our team grows (albeit temporarily) in size and skills. Now if we could only get some A/C in here….