More fun from the Sundance Film Festival with Your Vegas, an amazing new band from the UK.

They had fun with what they kept referring to as our Fair Trade "football". 

:)

The band is pictured here lounging with our eco-certified soccer ball and Joe Tomlinson, Founder of RE:VOLVE Apparel Project, a very cool new eco-company and creator of the Giving Suite.

For more Sundance reading, check out Greenloop's blog coverage of the event by Jenn Breckenridge.

Shymala has high hopes for her granddaughter Roopa, and for her future. Roopa is 14 years old and is in the 9th grade, along with her best friend Mahalakshmi.

Shymala and Roopa live in one of the rooms of New Ambadi Rubber Estate, where we source our eco-certified Fair Trade rubber for our sports balls. These rooms are small, but quite comfortable. They have electricity, an individual water supply, separate toilets, and a small space for keeping chickens and growing vegetables. In fact, there is a waiting list for this type of accommodation. Most workers have to rent houses or flats in nearby villages.

Shymala works in the latex factory of New Ambadi. She is a trade union leader, not just representing the workers of the plantation, but also rubber workers throughout the district. She is also a member of the joint body, which was started when FairDeal Trading (our sister company in the U.K.) began buying rubber under Fair Trade conditions. Our group (FDT in the U.K. and Fair Trade Sports in North America) is the only company in the world that pays a Fair Trade premium for latex, which is then processed into components for soccer balls and other sports balls in Pakistan.

The joint body meets regularly and keeps meeting minutes. It has decided to save the Fair Trade premiums into a fund, which will be used to pay for the children of the plantation workers to go to college. Even though education in India is free, in principle, only children who can afford to go to private schools have a chance of getting a decent job after their schooling. The joint body told us that we need to buy at least 90 tons of rubber in order for the fund to have enough money in it to start paying out stipends.

Shymala hopes that her granddaughter will be one of the first to benefit. She would like her to train as a nurse. The three -year course costs quite a bit, which she could never afford out of her salary.

The second benefit of our buying is that we paid for the registration of New Ambadi into the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) initiative for responsible forest management, helping to make rubber production more sustainable.

The positive effects of Fair Trade (and your participation) just seem to multiply...thank you!

The Giving Suite at the Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah is a hopping place this week.



They've taken the idea behind a "Gifting Suite" - where celebrities, VIPs, and trendsetters get handed bags of free stuff - and changed it to a Giving Suite, where those folks can purchase products like our eco-certified Fair Trade soccer balls with all the profits going to charity. Their tagline says it all: Giving. It's the New Getting.

The charities featured this year are The Waterkeeper Alliance, Earth Pledge, The Environmental Media Association, Healthy Child/Healthy World, Our Future Now, The United Nations HCR, and the favorite of Fair Trade Sports...Room to Read.

The concept was created by Joe and Amy Tomlinson, the owners of RE:VOLVE Apparel Project and executed by Mathew Gerson's crew at eConsciousMarket. What a brilliant idea. We're stoked to be a part of it.

Check out their video blog.

My son is writing this blog post with me from my office (he's out of school today).

He studied "The Peacemakers" in school this year - including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - whose quote I have posted on my wall.

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

What a brilliant, powerful, wise person. 

The photo here is of Dr. King with Father Hesburgh of the University of Notre Dame.

Solvie Karlstrom of National Geographic's Green Guide recently featured our eco-friendly Fair Trade football on CBS as one of her favorite items this season.

"The other item that I really like this year is this fairly traded football, it's lined with FSC certified rubber, which comes from the rubber trees of well managed forests." explains Ms. Karlstrom. Check out the article and the video.

Check out this video from Fair Indigo, a fair trade clothing company headquartered near Madison Wisconsin.

There, you'll meet Karina Madelaine Perez Leon, an extraordinary young woman who has made a big impression in her community in Peru, while she stands just two and a half feet tall!

Karina is making handcrafted jewelry in her first-ever real job, thanks to the efforts of Anonymous Angels (Angeles Anonimos), an organization that finds employment for people with disabilities.

Speaking of Fair Indigo, go ahead and stop by their website and get one of our children's Fair Trade soccer balls.

Kadir Ensurre is a welder. He makes security grills and window fencing for people's homes.

He also repairs tools and metal furniture. He says he is always busy because there is such a demand for his type of work. His small workshop is on a busy road, so he attracts passing trade as well as having regular customers.

Kadir trained as a welder for two years until he was 18 years old. His mother, who stitched soccer balls for us, took out a substantial loan so that Kadir could start his own welding business. He pays rent on his shop every month, and the rest of the money was spent on numerous power tools, compressors and a welding plant.

He also makes a seperate monthly payment on his micro-credit loan from the program we fund, while still bringing home enough money so that his mother can retire from stitching soccer balls. And when the loan has been fully paid off, his income will rise considerably.

Kadir points out that without micro-credit it would be impossible for him to have opened his workshop. Banks would demand a guarantor or property to back a loan, things his family does not have. A bank loan would also accrue large interest charges that would make paying off such a loan very difficult.

Kadir is looking forward to expanding his business when the loan is paid off. "I enjoy my job and want my business to grow," he said. Micro-credit loans provide real help, as well as personal and professional growth. We are honored to be part of Kadir's life!

What's your eco-resolution for 2008?

Make a short video (max 2 minutes) about what you plan to do for the earth this year and submit it to QuantumShift.tv's eco-resolutions contest. Prizes include eco-certified Fair Trade soccer balls, footballs, and more!

It could be personal, political, local or global. Any action you can think of that moves us closer to a sustainable future!