Students buy Fair Trade items at IMU from all around world

Bags from Nepal, soap from India, hats from Bolivia and jewelry from Kenya.

All these items were displayed on tables filling the Georgian room in the Indiana Memorial Union. The products are supplied by Fair Trade and represent dozens of countries from around the world.

Beginning Thursday and continuing through Saturday, Fair Trade Bloomington is hosting a holiday sale that includes goods that range from coffee to Christmas ornaments. The artisan gifts are a way to support communities in developing countries, all while purchasing items for gifts or personal use.

Fair Trade offers a wide variety of products. Some of the top sellers are coffee and Vietnamese fish rocks. No matter what the product, the goods help to break the industrial and agricultural circles of poverty in areas across the globe, said senior Anna Fried.

The goods offered by Fair Trade Bloomington are products made by impoverished people from the developing world. The sale of these goods provide employment and income for some of the world’s poorest people.

The beauty of Fair Trade is the ways it helps the producers of goods.

“It gets rid of the labor and environmental exploitation,” said Mary Embry, apparel merchandising professor. “It is a cleaner way of shopping.”

Fair Trade Bloomington promotes ethically produced handmade products while helping to solve economic issues through beneficial trading practices. It also tries to educate about the cultures associated with the products and the people that make them.

Fair Trade Bloomington has been host to four years of holiday sales in Bloomington. This year the Students in Free Enterprise and IU Student Foundation partnered to make this year’s sales an even bigger success. IUSF sold coffee mugs to help the cause. Together, these two organizations are working to raise money for a permanent store in Bloomington, said sophomore Marilyn Park.

The store will partner with Global Gifts, which is based out of Indianapolis and has been open for more than 20 years. Fair Trade Bloomington hopes to open its new store by next fall and make Bloomington the next place in Indiana to promote the fair trade movement, Embry said.

IUSF and SIFE worked together to make the holiday sale happen and in the process gained valuable experience.

“The goal of SIFE is not only fair trade, but also to give students opportunities for leadership and real-work experience,” Embry said.

Supporting Fair Trade helps people in developing nations sell their goods in an ethical way, Embry said. As consumers, Fair Trade develops a new way to buy those products used every day.

“Fair Trade emphasizes new models, new ways of buying goods. I feel better every time I shop,” Embry said. “It makes us think about more consciously about what resources go into the things we purchase. It makes us not-so-casual consumers.”