October is Fair Trade Month

Every Purchase Matters.

That's really something to think about. I love that October is Fair Trade Month. Fall is my favorite season, and the perfect time to reflect as the weather turns cooler and the season's change creeps in. Summer's crazy schedules wind down, and the hectic holidays still seem far off on the horizon. We finally have the time to be present - conscious of the decisions we make each day.

Fair Trade is a Story. Here's one story about how fair trade helps farmers around the world, and your role as a consumer.

There is really only one thing we ask of our customers this month - start to think about your purchases. Our sputtering economy has most people tightening their belts and doing their best to hang on. In an effort to save, we often look to buy only what's cheap in the marketplace. This month, instead of looking at price tags alone, we urge you to make the effort to see behind the price - look for the person behind the product. Hesitate for just one minute to think about how your buying decisions are shaping our world.

Need some help finding fair trade products? Check out this great new app from Fair Trade USA - Fair Trade Finder - every time you find a fair trade product in a shop, you can check in. It's a huge, community-based effort to make it a little easier for all of us to shop fair trade.

In honor of fair trade month, we're boosting our efforts to share our fair trade story with you - you'll see beautiful photo stories of our tailors and more in-depth information about how we comply with the nine principles of fair trade.

We'll also make it a little easier for you to shop fair trade. Twice during the month we'll have two-day free shipping events - but you have to stay tuned. Check our Twitter feed and Facebook to find out when it will happen.

And then there is our October Giveaway. You've never seen a giveaway like this before.

How will you celebrate Fair Trade Month? Share your story with us.

Developing Transparent Relationships

What are you wearing? The tag on your shirt might say "Made in Bangladesh" or "Made in China," but what does it mean? Who actually made it? What is their life like? When you shop, does it make you responsible for the way in which the worker is treated? Or how the factory treats the environment? What role does the consumer play?

 What does it mean?

I never asked myself these questions until I started One Mango Tree. When we began working on our organic apparel line, I toured LAP Textiles, a large (now closed) apparel manufacturing facility in Kampala's industrial area. The factory was clean - it didn't match up with the idea of a "sweatshop" that I'd had in my mind. The sewing operators were almost entirely women - at that point in time, there were 300 women working at LAP, and they were stitching button-down shirts for EDUN, the clothing line started by Bono and his wife Ali Hewson.

What gave me pause during that visit was learning that sewing operators at LAP Textiles made 90,000 Ugandan shillings per month. At the time, that was equivalent to $45. Sure, these women had jobs, but how much could they buy with $45 per month? Not much.

What about other factories, where dangerous toxic chemicals are discharged into rivers? Or where women workers are raped, tortured and abused? Or where toxic chemicals emitted from clothing actually cause workers to pass out?

Producers and factories are responsible for their labor and environmental practices, but we think consumers are responsible too. In a way, shopping is like voting - every dollar you spend is placing a vote.

The second principle of fair trade is about transparency and accountability:

Develop transparent and accountable relationships.

The Fair Trade Federation defines this principle further:

Fair trade involves relationships that are open, fair, consistent, and respectful. Members show consideration for both customers and producers by sharing information about the entire trading chain through honest and proactive communication. They create mechanisms to help customers and producers feel actively involved in the trading chain. If problems arise, members work cooperatively with fair trade partners and other organizations to implement solutions.

For One Mango Tree, this transparency and accountability is the foundation of what we do. From paying our workers a fair wage to sharing the details of our supply chain with our customers, we build this principle into our model. We strive to build a better workplace for our staff in Uganda - ensuring fair wages, providing child care and respectful leave policies, and trainings on financial literacy and savings. Our producers organize to determine their own labor rates. We strive to educate our customers on our processes and help them learn to make more conscious buying decisions.

We also bring you a face with each product by including a signature from each woman on the hangtag of a completed product. You can go online and see this woman - once you see the producer behind your purse or your t-shirt, you'll find yourself asking that very important question:

What am I wearing?

We need more active consumers to make big changes in our world. Want to learn more? Here are a few good places to start - 
Follow us on twitter @onemangotree for daily updates on these issues and more

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
Slow Fashioned - check out the blog & take the Slow Fashioned Pledge
Read Ethical Consumer's Shopping Guide to see how designer brands measure up

This post is part of a series about Fair Trade Federation's Nine Fair Trade Principles. The series was inspired by Using Fair Trade Principles to Empower Women in Uganda, a talk given at the Library of Congress by One Mango Tree's founder in November 2010. You can watch the video here.

Creating opportunities

In 2007, I was working for Global Youth Partnership for Africa, a non-profit that organized youth programs on conflict resolution in Northern Uganda. We were based in Gulu for a week, meeting with young people, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government officials, and Ugandan citizens - to try to understand the roots of conflict, and how the region might realize a sustainable peace. During our breaks, I would walk with students through the central market, admiring the beautiful fabrics and the quiet whir of the foot-pedal sewing machines. Stall after stall was filled with tailors - a by-product of NGO vocational trainings. Tailoring is a very popular skill set meant to economically empower women in places like Northern Uganda.

Gulu's central market, filled with NGO-trained tailors

There was a problem here. While the market was filled with tailors, few of them were able to earn a livelihood - most of them could barely cover rent on their market stalls. Their best hope was to clothe the aid workers (like us) who spent lazy weekend afternoons in Gulu shopping the market and having dresses made.

The first principle of Fair Trade is about market connection:

Creating opportunities for economically and socially marginalized producers.

The Fair Trade Federation, the membership body in North America promoting fair trade products, defines this principle further:

Fair Trade is a strategy for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Members create social and economic opportunities through trading partnerships with marginalized producers. Members place the interests of producers and their communities as the primary concern of their enterprise.

Auma Lucy in her market stall in Gulu

Auma Lucy was a good tailor. She had a bare stall with a sewing machine, and was trying to grow her business amongst the competition in the market. She was charismatic, and compared with most women in Northern Uganda, her English was fantastic. She took every opportunity to bring in young women who were suffering - single mothers, young women she feared might "get into trouble" - she saw herself in these women, sitting at home with nothing to occupy their time, never finishing their schooling for lack of school fee money, getting pregnant too young - or worse, contracting HIV.

the tool to change lives

On her own, Lucy struggled to make ends meet. She didn't have funds to pay rent on her market stall. She had thirteen children at home (eleven orphans) and her elderly parents to worry about. With a market connection to customers in the United States, she could really make an impact (and much-needed profit).

All women in Northern Uganda bear a heavy burden. During the conflict, they lost their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers, and are often victims themselves - forced to fight as soldiers, serve as soldiers' wives, raped and stigmatized by their own communities. Regardless of their past circumstances, any woman will tell you that when it comes time to put food on the table and send their kids to school, she will do whatever she must to pull it together and make ends meet.

The sheer quantity of trained tailors in Uganda was a curse for the local market, where customers were few. A connection to the United States market turned that curse into an opportunity - an opportunity for poor women in a region destroyed by more than twenty years of armed conflict to earn a living and create change in their lives.

This post is part of a series about Fair Trade Federation's Nine Fair Trade Principles. The series was inspired by Using Fair Trade Principles to Empower Women in Uganda, a talk given at the Library of Congress by One Mango Tree's founder in November 2010. You can watch the video here.