Natural Products Expo West was AWESOME! Dakota & I were thrilled to represent Temple University among many others who have student campaigns to raise Fair Trade awareness on campus and begin to source more Fair Trade products to campus. It was truly incredible to get to be a part of the Expo, meet and network with Fair Trade Certified companies and talk about how they can help us with our campaign, and meet the super fun staff of Fair Trade USA and see how passionate everyone is about growing the reach of the campaign.
One pivotal moment of the Expo for me was meeting the CEO of Naranjillo, a coffee/chocolate company from Lima, Peru, who is in the process of becoming Fair Trade Certified. This moment stuck out to me because he actually knew the mentor I worked with in researching Fair Trade in Peru during my semester abroad, as well as the farmer I got to meet in Peru which really was a defining moment in why I became passionate about Fair Trade. I am so thankful to have had this moment, because it made me rethink what is truly behind the movement- the faces and the changes that are made. It’s easy to lose sight of things in a first-world country where I’m just consuming Fair Trade products and not experiencing the third-world poverty that agriculture producers face every day.
Here I am with Isaac & Rolando from Naranjillo at the Fair Trade USA booth:
On Thursday evening, Dakota & I arrived to Anaheim after a road trip along Hwy 1 through Big Sur, to San Francisco & Muir Woods, to Sausalito, Yosemite National Park, Sequoia groves, and the Mojave Dessert. In our first meeting of the weekend with Fair Trade USA and their partners, we got to network with different awesome companies (like Badger chapstick, several tea companies, and Esteem who focuses on Fair Trade cotton in India) and we even got to be a part of Fair Trade USA’s presentation. We lovedddd presenting and representing the company at a collegiate/student level and explained the different project we’ve taken on, are working on, and are planning for the future relative to Fair Trade. We mentioned our eat2defeat event via Students for Responsible Business (SRB), various chocolate tastings, a Fair Trade internship, our “Change Your Clothes” Alta Gracia campaign, Fair Trade Training Day & our Fair Trade Food Trucks initiative (which is in it’s baby stages still). The companies seemed to enjoy hearing from us and were very open about different ways that they could help us out on campus.
We gave these goodies away to all meeting attendees:
Friday was definitely our busiest day of networking and helping out and running around the expo. We worked on scoping out all of the Fair Trade Certified companies and distributing marketing materials to them, talking to them about our campaign, and familiarizing ourselves with their products which we’ll potentially be trying to bring to campus very soon. Some of my favorite companies with the Fair Trade Certification off the top of my head were Three Twins ice cream, Chocolate XOXO candy bars, and Coconut Bliss (AMAZING ICE CREAM!)- We’ll be blogging more about these companies and products shortly. (Behind on the blogs due to a lagging internet in our expo hotel). After a day of running around at the expo, we worked at a new products launch party on behalf of Fair Trade USA- very fun! Very tiring, very insightful.
Here we are hanging out at the Fair Trade USA booth:
More to come on the expo!…
