Trade As One

Once a year, we cut some prices so that we can turn around and place large orders to our producers. Our goal is to provide consistent, year-round employment for our partners in the developing world, and the Winter Sale helps us to do just that. As always, our producers were paid in full for their work, we’ve just cut prices for you!

Our Winter Sale section has four main categories: Seasonal, Bags, Jewelry, and Houseware. I’m including an excerpt from the newsletter we just sent out below, so that you can get a peek at some of the items in our Winter Sale Section. If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter, you can do that by entering your email address in the box to the upper right.

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Seasonal

Get ahead of the game with Holiday decorations at low prices! We have Christmas items at prices as low as $1.50. The cards, ornaments, and decorations you’ll find are all made by those wrestling with extreme poverty and its effects, and the income they earn gives them a chance to lift themselves out of poverty. Click here to see all Seasonal items on sale.

Bags

Bags from Guatemala, Cambodia, and India are made by women seeking a chance to support themselves with dignity despite the overwhelming odds they face. There’s something special about keeping your belongings safe in a bag that helps bring safety to those in desperately need. We’ve got slings, totes, pouches, clutches, purses, and more. Beautiful, trendy, fair, and affordable! Click here to see all of the Bags on sale.

Jewelry

Our Guatemalan jewelry is chock-full of color, personality, and the unique handmade touch. The women making these pieces now have the chance to use their many talents to support their families, and earn a voice in their communities. Check out our necklaces, earrings, and bracelets, so you can ring in the new year with fair and fashionable accessories. Click here to see all of the Fair Trade jewelry on sale.

Houseware

Useful and beautiful houseware products allow you to decorate your home with Fair Trade! Hand woven telephone wire bowls from South Africa are 33% off, candle holders from Morocco are 40+% off, and much more.  Click here to see all of the houseware items on sale.

This last year we were quite impressed with the creativity that so many of you showed in your efforts to spread Fair Trade to your communities, and to incorporate it into your daily lives. We often feel like it’s our job just to keep up with what our supporters are doing, and last year was no different. Here’s just a few of the ways that people got creative.

- A church in Phoenix distributed 8,000 Fair Trade cups made by our partners in India and asked their congregation to drink only water from those cups for a week, keeping in mind the scarcity of accessible clean water for so many in the world.

- A couple in Texas ordered a custom Fair Trade rug, and stood on it while they said their vows, sealing the pursuit of justice into their marriage.

- So many combined gifts of presence with Fair Trade gifts as a part of their participation in Advent Conspiracy.

- A group of high schoolers in Illinois pooled their money and started a Trading Post at their Youth Group.

- A group in Illinois used Halloween and a “Trunk or Treat” party to talk about injustice in the chocolate industry, and the Fair Trade alternative.

- So many turned Christmas into an opportunity to educate and inspire their friends and family, requesting more material to give away with their gifts.

Coming up this year:

- A family in Texas is doing a Fair Trade Bar Mitzvah (Fair Trade Yarmulkes!)

- A couple in Texas is using their marriage as a way to spread the word about Fair Trade, by raffling off Fair Trade items, and giving Fair Trade favors.

And it’s only January 8th.

So what about you? What did you do this last year? What ideas do you have for this year?

Every year, as we approach Christmas, the consumerism that drives our culture loses all subtlety. Companies approach the end of the calendar year desperate to meet revenue expectations and they create marketing campaigns that play on our fears and insecurities, with the simple objective of driving more purchasing.

In this post, I’ll focus on a few of the effects that this consumption fest has on us. In a couple of days, I’ll suggest something of an antidote, and then late this week (or maybe early next week), I’ll write on some practical suggestions that follow as a result of that thinking. 

So what does consumerism do to us?

•      We become fearful – fearful of losing, of falling behind, of failing compared to others, of not being as successful as we should be, of missing out on experiences and privileges that we think we deserve. We live with an unnamed anxiety that gnaws at us, that makes us restless, dissatisfied, fearful people. That guy drives a better car – he must be better than me in meetings. He probably went to a better school. She always knows what to wear. I bet she is liked by more people than I am. Her children are going to be more successful than mine. They never seem overwhelmed - my life is not as together as theirs is.

•      It reduces me to being nothing more than a collection of impulses –  the satisfaction of acquisition, the thrill of winning, the temporal and sensual satiation of cravings. After a lifetime chasing these things, you will hear people say in a moment of weakness - Is this really all there is? We were not created to be simply a complex collection of temporal impulses. There is violence done to the human soul when it is reduced to that.

•      The third side-effect of the consumerist culture is that it enslaves me to devote more of my energies to buying things and less on what is important, but it makes it feel like I have no choice. We gear our finances up and defer the payments to the future. This mountain of debt enslaves us to a degree of busy-ness and frantic activity that robs us of rest, of joy, of peace and wonder, and I feel powerless to do anything about it.

•      And finally, by taking more than I should from the world, I become an instrument of its abuse. Piles of acquired nonsense get purchased, used a couple of times and then discarded. We even pay to store all this stuff somewhere other than our homes. Guess how much stuff bought in America is still in use six months later? 1%. ONE PERCENT*. Our participation in this system can cause us a deep sense of grief. I have left enormous shopping malls with a grief that almost causes me to weep at how wrong we have got it.
Check back in later this week for a more hopeful post. Although consumerism is all-pervasive, it’s antidote lies in the quiet power of gratitude and generosity.

*More details here

Today in Portland, Nathan George and Rick McKinley launched the partnership between Advent Conspiracy and Trade as One. They clearly articulated the links between the work each organization does, and laid out a vision for churches to celebrate Christmas the way it was meant to be celebrated. Click here for more information, or to get your church involved.

I have never been one to get ahead with my holiday shopping any earlier than absolutely necessary- but right now I’m actually up to my eyes in what I’m hoping just might be YOUR Christmas shopping!  So, if there’s anything you want to add to the list…
One of my roles at Trade as One is to liaise with our talented producer groups and select and order the products that we sell.  At this time I’m deep in decisions about which products to order for the rest of the year- the products that you will be seeing and buying on the website and at events in the autumn.  So many choices to be made!  Which colors, which styles, how many?!  We are excited to be in a position to place larger orders than ever before to be ready for the autumn’s events and online sales.
If you have ideas for products, and comments about styles then please do always feel free to let us know here.  If you particularly like any products you’ve bought then I’d love to see reviews appearing on our new website.  What makes it all worthwhile is the huge difference these purchases are making to our producers- and to their ability to provide steady, secure, dignified and creative jobs for those who need them most of all.