Congratulations to the eco-resolution contest winners!

Your prizes of eco-certified Fair Trade soccer balls, volleyballs, and more are on their way to you now. Thank you for moving us closer to a sustainable future!

For those on you in the Texas area, be sure to put the annual Fair Trade Federation conference on your calendars. This year it is in Austin on April 4-6.

FTF members and friends are invited to join us for vital conversations about the strategic future of FTF, great networking opportunities, and skill building workshops at the 2008 Conference. You can register here.

Members are invited to an all day strategic planning session on Friday, April 4. I'm looking forward to seeing friends from across the country again, like Jackie DeCarlo, the Fair Trade whirlwind from CRS (Catholic Relief Services). She's pictured here with her sticker-adorned laptop (we're honored to have our RESPECT sticker placed between Ani DiFranco and Peace Coffee).

On Saturday and Sunday, April 5-6, members and non-members are invited to attend special seminars and trainings on:

• branding
• financing
• marketing
• and other key areas

There will also be a Fair Trade Expo open to the public where you can see the latest Fair Trade products. Hope to see you there!

Kellee Sikes from Pioneer Technologies wrote an interesting article called Social Responsibility: Charity Hijacked that featured some kind words about Fair Trade Sports.

It made the home page for FastCompany today. Check it out.

I was speaking with students at the University of Washington last week about this topic and realized I had not yet done a blog post summary on it. So here you go...

As suppliers of Fair Trade soccer balls, we've signed up to a pioneering initiative where soccer ball stitching is organized into small work units in the villages of Sialkot, Pakistan - with dedicated units for women, who - in an Islamic society - could not work in the same room as men.

As part of Fair Trade requirements for sports balls (PDF), the working conditions in these units (ventilation, lighting and access to safe drinking water) are being improved each year.

The key component of Fair Trade criteria, however, is that the workers in these centers receive a substantially increased wage for all soccer balls ordered under Fair Trade conditions. These wages are calculated - if it were applied for all their work - to meet the basic needs of a family, allowing the children to go to school instead of having to work.

Furthermore, a basic health care program is provided for all those involved in the production of Fair Trade sports balls - a first for this type of employment. And in order to reduce the workers' dependency on the ball-export production (which can be seasonal), micro-credit loans are offered to improve the village economy and to provide alternative or additional income opportunities to the workers.

To finance these changes, a Fair Trade premium is also placed on the price of each unit. And as with all other products that carry the Fair Trade certification, compliance with these criteria is subject to constant independent monitoring. The Fair Trade certification does indeed guarantee a better deal for all producers.

In the case of Fair Trade soccer balls, the price of every ball includes a premium that we pay (but not pass on to you the consumer), which contributes to the health care and micro-credit programs described above, the improvement of working conditions, and above all ensures that whoever stitched your ball has received a fair wage.

We believe this gives an entirely new meaning to the term, "customer satisfaction"!

Who inspires you? Who makes you stop your normal routine of the day and take notice? Who makes you want to change (yourself, the world)?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr is one of those individuals who - when hearing or reading his words - will stop me cold in my tracks and make me reconsider what I am doing, how I am doing it, and my motivation for doing so. Part of what makes me take notice of his words are the words themselves - powerfully written and poignant. But the other part of what inspires me is the delivery (style and manner) of his words.

I regularly look at the MLK quote on my wall - positioned just above my monitor so I see it all day - whether I'm designing a new Fair Trade soccer ball for Fair Trade Sports, or working on our abolitionist website, the Not For Sale Campaign. Dr. King is the one individual whose recorded words pull me out of the minutia of the day and gets me to think again about the big picture.

And now, there is another.

For more reasons than just the repetitive use of a key phrase, I'm reminded alot of MLK when I watch this video of Barack Obama's early January speech, created by Will.i.am from the music group Black Eyed Peas. Whether you agree with Obama's politics or not, watch and be inspired...

Can we make positive change in this world...and ourselves? Yes, we can.

...in anything. What was once a touted as a wonder substance is now proven to be poisoning ourselves and our planet.

Many low-end soccer balls are made with PVC - it's much cheaper to use than other materials - by companies who give no warning to the consumer. Our soccer balls are made of synthetic leather from polyurethane; more expensive but significantly safer than PVC. You can read more details on the environmental impact of our eco-certified soccer balls from this previous post.

You can learn more about ridding your own life of PVC from the folks at the Center for Health, Environment and Justice in New York. Here's what Mike Schade, their PVC Campaign Coordinator, had to say:

"Sports balls made from PVC pose an unnecessary and preventable threat to our health and environment. PVC is the poison plastic, using and releasing highly hazardous chemicals that foul our air, water, and soil. There's no safe way to make PVC. That's why many leading companies are phasing it out in favor of safer and healthier alternatives. We commend companies like Fair Trade Sports that are promoting and selling PVC-free sports balls."

Sign up for the PVC Action Network with their Be Safe program, and help protect our families and communities from dangerous chemicals in consumer products.

For an oft-humorous quick read about green-living tips, consider checking out Ideal Bite.

This week their focus was on green tips for guys.

My friend don Miguel was recently out looking for surf in Northern California when he took this self-portrait. DM is one of the founders of Guayaki, the leading company that brings us a fairly traded organic green tea called yerba mate which helps me survive these cold gray Pacific Northwest winters.

Don Miguel, David Karr, Pierre Ferrari and the rest of their crew are doing an amazing job with their company, bringing high quality yerba mate products to the US while generating money to reforest large areas of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.

Look for it in your local grocery market, or if you are in Northern California, stop by their new cafe at 6784 Sebastopol Avenue.

What a great pairing to help survive the winter blues...two eco-friendly Fair Trade products that get your body moving and energized - a soccer ball and a warm yerba mate drink!

Gidpur is a small village outside of Sialkot, Pakistan. It is centered around a large banyan tree that provides welcome shade from the sweltering heat.

The village is very poor. The road is extremely rutted and the few buildings are single-story brick dwellings that house large families. Martin and James from FairDeal Trading (our sister company in the UK) met the Khan family, who had been joined just days before by a new member, a healthy boy.

The mother - Mushulcut - was sitting with her new baby. The baby was delivered at a good hospital in Sialkot, where Mushulcut stayed for 24 hours after giving birth. The hospital fees and all necessary medicines were paid entirely by our Fair Trade program, which is funded by your purchases of our certified Fair Trade sports balls.

"I am very thankful that the hospital was paid for," she said. "Without this, we would be in debt. My last baby was also delivered with the help of the Fair Trade (program), and she was a girl. Now we have a boy and we have called him Morcadus, which means The Holy."

Mushulcut's husband Selferaz is also keen to say how helpful the Fair Trade initiative has been to them. "We are a Fair Trade family," he said with a grin on his face.

Green your tailgate party for the Big Weekend with our eco-certified football.

More more easy tips on guiltless ways to go green this season, check out the The Lazy Environmentalist.

Enjoy the game!