Carleton’s Fair Trade University club and Dining Services hosted Fair Trade Campus Week to promote fair trade awareness on campus. The movement, which strives to promote products made without human rights abuses and with proper environmental standards, ran from Sept. 25 to 28.
“At Carleton, this year’s Fair Trade Campus Week is all about showing students how far our university has come with supporting human rights,” Ivy McKee, a fourth-year public affairs and policy management student and the president of Fair Trade Carleton University, said in an email.
She said there were numerous events lined up including games, free food and a bake sale.
“We have a jeopardy event that’s happening around campus. We’ll be giving out free food, and we’re having a coffee giveaway,” Crystal Justason, a club member and second-year biology student, said.
McKee said the club wanted to organize events that made Fairtrade products available and educated students about the fair trade movement.
“We also wanted to do events that were more educational, so we had a speaker come in from Unitarian Service Committee of Canada,” she said.
McKee added that the club hosted the “World’s Largest Fair Trade Bake Sale” on Sept. 28, which she said was planned by the Canadian Fair Trade Network.
Justason said fair trade prices are the same as buying non-fair trade products, but buying fair trade directly ensures workers are receiving fair pay.
“When I first came here four years ago, the only place to get Fairtrade coffee on campus was Rooster’s, and now you can get it at all non-franchise places,” McKee said. “It’s really inspiring for students to see that they attend a school that supports buying local, buying fair trade and organic.”
McKee said after making Carleton a Fair Trade campus, in which they worked with Dining Services, Rooster’s, Mike’s Place and other food service providers on campus to switch their products to ethical, Fairtrade-certified products, the club plans to get Fairtrade clothing into the bookstore.
The Fair Trade club on campus works closely with Fairtrade Canada, which has the same goals to increase awareness about fair trade.
Katie Briscoe, a Fair Trade club member and second-year public affairs and policy management student, said it’s important for students to know about the fair trade movement because it affects everyone.
“It’s hard to know what goes behind all of the things we buy every day so fair trade is sort of a confidence we’re not doing harmful things to other people and the planet when we make our choices at the grocery store,” Briscoe said. “It’s really awesome for us as students to realize that our consumer choices can be powerful.”
