Fair Trade

This week at Bridgewater State College is Sustainability Week, many of you might know because of classes doing certain projects for a particular event. On tuesday, my Corporate Comm. class participated in a poster session during the Free Trade Fair Trade Coffee event. Today we participated in another poster session discussing Sustainability and Sodexo ( BSC's food provider).Prior to this semester I was unaware of exactly what free/fair trade was and its importance. Why should you care? Well, this is an important issue to become aware of, because us as both students and consumers can make a change and voice our opinions.

Products that are considered 'fair trade' are the ones you want to go with! Fair Trade is an organized social movement, that aims to help producers in developing countries and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a "fair price" as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably we have been focusing on coffee.

I encourage everyone to get involved in promoting fair trade, because you are encouraging helping countries less fortunate than ours, you are also encouraging equal and fair rights to laborers within those countries. If you are interested Dr. Lizie from the Communication Studies department told us today, he will be doing a second semester seminar primarily focusing on this subject next semester. If you're still around BSC, maybe you can check it out!