October is the official Fair Trade month. Please consider how you can support Fair Trade producers around the world by making a special effort to look for Fair Trade products this month while doing your in-store and on-line shopping.

Fair Trade Sports will begin taking preorders in October - a Fair Trade volleyball would make a great gift for a friend…or yourself!

Nick Aster from Triple Pundit is part of a new generation of MBAs who are exploring the "tripartate relationship between Environment, Society and Business." He also writes snappy headlines!

Graduate schools like University of Notre Dame (IN), Bainbridge Graduate Institute (WA), and Presidio School of Management (CA, where Nick is in school) are producing the type of business leaders for whom I have respect. This new generation of business leaders understand and appreciate economic efficiencies and the need for profits, but pursue them in a balanced, sustainable manner, and use the proceeds wisely.

Like these new business leaders, we want Fair Trade Sports to operate as efficiently as possible because our proceeds are destined for children’s charities that I believe are making a huge positive impact in the world.

Eager to help Fair Trade Sports spread the word about the newest category of Fair Trade products?

Here is a quick Top Ten list of ideas:

1. Add us to your Wist List as Green LA Girl has done.
   
2. Get on Wheel of Fortune and say, "Pat, I’d like to buy a Fair Trade Sports ball, er I mean, a vowel."
3. Tell 10 friends about us by the end of this week. Perhaps forward them this post, with a short introduction from yourself.
   
4. Put a button like the one above from Paul Soupiset on your site or MySpace page.
5. Send us content for our blog. If it is related to fighting extreme poverty, fighting child labor, or the Fair Trade movement, we’re interested!
   
6. Add us to the main Fair Trade entry on Wikipedia (or make us a new one).
7. Join our MySpace site as a friend.
   
8. Copy and paste this code onto your website or MySpace site to show our latest blogs:
   
   <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/FairTradeSports"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/FairTradeSports.gif" style="border:0" alt="Fair Trade Sports"/></a>
   
   
9. Approach the coaches in your life and ask them to support us. Tell them you have a great new "coaching point" for them to teach the kids about Respect.
10. And of course, once we begin selling product in a few weeks, buy a ball or two!

You probably have more great ideas yourself. Share them with us below!

…a blown ankle (I stepped in a hole while sprinting for the ball). My friend Katie Pearson of Be New Yoga recommends three stretches to rehabilitate a rolled ankle, and two stretches to avoid:

• Mountain: standing pose with feet hip distance apart
• Tree: for standing balance
• Balance Chair: feet parallel, work one foot at a time

And she reminds me to avoid stretches like Triangle and Warrior. Why? I have no idea, but I always do what she and Michelle Hutchins say when it comes to yoga!

Several people have asked who exactly Fair Trade Sports, Inc is now. We are a small group of folks* from around the globe committed to fighting poverty through business. And doing so in a transparent and authentic way. In addition to the founders (my wife Susan and myself on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle), the team bringing you Fair Trade Sports consists of:

• Shahzad and his manufacturing team in Pakistan
• Dr. Martin Kunz, our "professor" in the UK
• Kevin, our import/customs expert in Boston
• Paul, the guru delivering this web experience to you from Seattle
• Pat and Tracey, leading a diligent warehousing/fulfillment team from Seattle
• Mike, who provides web services integration from Canada
• Kevin and Fred, our technology guys from Seattle who write much better code than me
• Brad, who dispenses accounting wisdom from Seattle
• Skip and Andy, who provide legal counsel and witty commentary from downtown Seattle

And of course, you, our valued customer and community member.

* like a Japanese keiretsu…a network of free agents, freelancers, sole proprietors, and subject matter experts working from within larger companies.

More tunes to help me through this period of way-too-much-typing on the computers. Ironic that a sports ball company keeps me glued to my desk for too many hours a day; I need to do more "product testing"!

• Kenna: new sacred cow
  
• Love Coma: language of fools
• Queen: classics
• U2: dismantle…
  
• Red Hot Chili Peppers: blood, sugar…
  

…on helping at-risk children around the world. Every night at bedtime I say prayers with my 3-year old son, Justice. This past Saturday night we said a prayer of thanks for giving him such a great mommy, and asked God to show us how we could help all the children around the world without mommies.

We had talked earlier in the day specifically about Africa - after a picnic with a good friend who is one of the lost boys from Sudan - and discussing that the following day was the official Day for Darfur.

After the 10 second prayer…a short pause with a furrowed brow you could tell was doing some deep 3-year old thinking…then, “Daddy, tomorrow let’s fly 20 airplanes to Africa to help all the orphans.”

Ah, what a great confirmation that our commitment to use all our after-tax profits for children’s charities is a strong and true commitment. In fact, this single confirmation from a three-year old means more to me than all the nay-sayers combined.

How can you help at-risk children around the world (including our own country)? One way is by purchasing a Fair Trade sports ball, but I bet you can come up with a few ideas as well. Share your thoughts below…

Just thought I would share one of my favorite new photos. It’s great to put faces (and names) with the sports balls with which you play, train, and compete.

Pictured here are Mr. Shahid Imran and Mr. Shaukat Ali, who have been diligently working with the rest of our manufacturing team on our sports balls.

Several of you have been asking more about our centers where the Fair Trade Sports balls are hand-stitched. The production line at our manufacturer (Talon Sports) includes everything from lamination to packaging at the central facility. The hand-stitching is done at ILO-monitored stitching centers; our manufacturer is in the Top 3 companies with 100% production in ILO-monitored centers.

Quick bit of history: the ILO (International Labour Organization) is the specialized agency within the United Nations which "seeks the promotion of social justice and internationally recognized human and labour rights". It was founded in 1919 and is the only surviving major creation of the Treaty of Versailles which brought the League of Nations into being and it became the first specialized agency of the UN in 1946.

Talon has earned a place in the ILO’s "A-list" (also marked as the "Trade’s Outstanding Performance" list). We are quite proud of our manufacturing partner. Not only do they consistently produce sports balls of the highest quality, but can do so without resorting to destructive business practices. Our partners in Sialkot are true leaders in their industry.

Should you wish to learn more and see the results yourself, visit the IMAC website (Independent Monitoring Association for Child Labor).

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete" -Buckminister Fuller

Anyone who has this quote on their blog instantly makes me a fan, as it aptly describes what Fair Trade Sports - along with a host of other new companies - is trying to do in our respective industries. The Goode Life is a blog worth reading by "a green builder with a penchant for fashion." Arcadia Maximo, going by the moniker Carpenter Grrl, is the same dynamic person starring on the shows you’ve seen on HGTV - the only channel that makes me think about actually getting TV one day.

Recommended reading.