One of the biggest lessons we can teach our children is respect - respect for themselves, respect for their friends and global peers, and respect for their environment. Respect lies at the core of the Fair Trade movement.

Cindy Hughes, a teacher and advocate of Fair Trade, wrote us recently to tell us how she's reached the young people in her classroom in Wilmington, Delaware. One day at an away game, Cindy noticed the home team playing with one of our Fair Trade soccer balls.

A few inspiring lessons later, her classroom began to be aware of the impact Fair Trade can have on the world. Fair Trade principles extend well beyond the playing field (and vice versa). Respect taught in the classroom helps our young people understand the importance of respect in athletic activities. Respect for the other players is not the only respect we need to spread - but also respect for the workers who sew the balls, create the fields and craft the uniforms we wear. Fair Trade Sports believes that this global respect can change the world.

Changing the world starts with just one person - from Cindy in Delaware to the producers we pay fair prices in Pakistan and India. Just one Fair Trade purchase can mean a meal, an education and new hope for producers around the world. Fair Trade in sports (and the classroom) benefits everyone.

All this was accomplished with one soccer ball and some open-minded professionals who truly care about the future of our global youth! Cindy thanked us for the work we do here, but we thank her for making an impact on our future generation!

Since October is officially Fair Trade month, I asked a well-known leader in the movement, Jackie DeCarlo, to do a guest post for us. Jackie is the Senior Fair Trade Officer for Catholic Relief Services (CRS), author of Fair Trade: A Beginner's Guide, and a fellow blogger. Here you go:

Setting aside that October is Fair Trade month, autumn can be an awkward season for me. The holidays are approaching, and as a Fair Trader my job is to get people in the gift-buying mode, even though I hate shopping! Also, when it comes to sports, I am a bit out of the loop. I prefer solitary jogging (less than 10 days until I finish the Marine Corps Marathon!) to team sports, but this is the season of Monday Night Football and qualifying for baseball’s World Series! Thank goodness Fair Trade Sports has come into my life: I can keep up my end of conversations at the office water cooler and send a message too!

For more than a decade, Catholic Relief Services has been committed to promoting Fair Trade through our crafts, coffee, and chocolate projects. As the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community, CRS naturally finds Fair Trade as a way to put faith into practice in the marketplace. In fact, many of the core principles of Catholic Social Teaching, such as “working for the common good,” reflect Fair Trade practices such as organizing farmer cooperatives. With our program in more than 1,000 parishes and schools around the country, many of my colleagues are beginning to ask “What’s Next?” for promoting economic justice.

Enter the props of Fair Trade Sports! Whether I am holding up a rugby ball to demonstrate the process of harvesting cocoa pods in Ghana or dribbling a basketball in a large high school assembly, sports equipment helps me get attention! Once I make my general Fair Trade point, I take a moment to tell the story of the company behind the RESPECT logo. Students and adults alike are excited to know that Fair Trade is more than sipping the right cup of java or wearing the latest fashionable handcraft.

The Fair Trade leaders at Cabrini College in Pennsylvania took the notion on by organizing campus-wide awareness raising events that incorporated Fair Trade Sports equipment into a Wallyball tournament (here again, I didn’t even know what Wallyball WAS but the students got a whole tournament going!). CRS Fair Trade Ambassador Ann Green taught her son about Fair Trade and now his whole Ultimate Frisbee team is using it on the Texas A&M campus.

Those are one-off examples, though, and what is missing is an institutional commitment from faith-based organizations to purchase Fair Trade equipment for their youth groups or sports teams. Just as dining halls have converted to Fair Trade coffee, I can envision athletic departments expanding the values of good sportsmanship to encompass purchasing practices. That’s why CRS is proud to be exploring with the good folks at Fair Trade Sports how we can guide young people to the field of Fair Trade play.

Next month a dozen CRS sponsored students will be attending the United Students for Fair Trade convergence where Scott James will be doing a workshop. We fully expect those students to return to their campuses fired up and full of ideas for deepening Fair Trade campus commitments. If your school—faith based or secular—has succeeded at doing that, please share your ideas on this blog or give me a holler. As we’ve established, when it comes to sports, I could use all the help I can get. But with all these ideas generating, I am sure that faith-based groups will soon be ready to play ball!

~ Jackie

We all know that blogging has become a huge social networking tool used by all sorts of businesses and private writers to showcase ideas, events and news. Blogs can be used to help spread advocacy and awareness about international issues.

We use the Fair Trade Sports blog for spreading the movements of Fair Trade, abolition, and the root problem of extreme poverty. Today is this year's Blog Action Day 2008; the goal is to spread awareness specifically about Poverty.

Globally, poverty is a pervasive problem that will be solved only by international action. Every developed nation must band together to combat the top causes of poverty: disease, poor economic conditions and conflict.

How can one blog help in this fight against poverty? First, Blog Action Day 2008 is going to spread knowledge about poverty and new solutions through thousands of committed blogs. Do you have a blog? Then post today and spread the word! You'll join thousands of writers brainstorming and sharing their own stories about poverty. This alone brings advocacy to a whole new level.

Second, many of these bloggers are donating their profits for today to various charities connected to Global Action Day, just as we do every day. These charities include the Global Fund and Kiva. Both have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands in developing nations. The readers of the blogs on Blog Action Day 2008 can donate funds to these charities, and also purchase goods from participating blogging sites that will directly help developing nations.

If you're interested in participating, visit Blog Action Day 2008 right now for blogging ideas and more ways to help the fight against extreme poverty!

I'm reading through an advance copy of Seth Godin's new book called Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. As usual, it's quite good. I've been a fan of Godin since my high tech days, even sending him a soccer ball when we first launched Fair Trade Sports two years ago.

Godin talks alot about marketing; he is the defacto guru for internet marketing. I find his views on the subject fascinating given that I teach the Marketing class at Bainbridge Graduate Institute for MBA candidates. Godin is usually controversial in his views on Marketing, and usually correct.

In Tribes, he says (emphasis mine),

Marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make-stories that sell and stories that spread. Marketing elects presidents, and marketing raises money for charity. Marketing also determines if the CEO stays or goes (Carly Fiorina learned this the hard way). Most of all, marketing influences markets.

This is what we're attempting to do with Fair Trade Sports. It's the reason our home page is the blog, rather than the ecommerce store. We're trying to tell stories that spread.

It's the reason we designate our after-tax profits for children's charities. We're trying to divert money in the direction of "helping organizations", rather than organizations that continue to destroy our culture, communities, and planet.

It's the reason we created Fair Trade Sports as a for-profit company. We're trying to influence markets in North America, Australia, and the UK by bringing a line of sports balls that is certified Fair Trade as an alternative to the normal sweatshop-made ones. I want to help change Nike, Adidas, Baden, and the rest of the big players into truly sustainable companies by showing them a company can compete and thrive in this market with a non-sweatshop ball and eco-materials.

Godin goes on to say,

Marketing used to be about advertising, and advertising is expensive. Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.

At Fair Trade Sports, we eschew normal advertising (and the related paid celebrity endorsements) in favor for positive word-of-mouth. We ask our customers to help us spread the word about these alternative soccer balls that are the same quality and price (sometimes even more competitive on price) as the Top 5 brands we all know, but made under certified Fair Trade conditions and with eco-certified materials.

And you know what? Our customers say yes. I receive mail every week from more customers explaining how they are spreading the message of Respect in their own unique way.

Join us and help us spread the story!

September 22 marked the first day of Autumn, but today it feels like it really arrived. Seemingly overnight our temperatures dropped and our leaves began turning color. And the sun is setting a little earlier every night (ugh).

Such drastic change outside doesn't hinder the most serious players from pursuing their green dreams, though. At this time of the year, indoor soccer becomes a hit! Here in Washington State, a woman's indoor soccer team has entered their new season in style. Not only have they began using Fair Trade soccer balls, but they have traded in their old uniforms for new uniforms that Respect Fair Trade producers.

Tara Orr, seen holding the Fair Trade indoor soccer ball in this photo, has been our champion in telling others that there is an alternative to sweatshop labor soccer balls out there.

For those of you who play the form of indoor soccer known as futsal, we have an Earth-friendly futsal ball for you, too. Both the futsal ball and our indoor soccer ball are hand-sewn and made with care from producers who receive fair wages and benefits that improve their communities.

Participant Media was created in 2004 amidst popular culture that often ignored pressing social, economic and environmental issues. Participant Media's message is humanistic: people are basically good and everyone deserves a chance to interact to make an impact on the world.

Because of Participant Media's films and relationships to over 83 non-profit organizations around the world, they have procured over 106,000 tons in carbon offsets, introduced four climate change bills in Congress, and educated millions on oil dependence. And this is just to name a few of their accomplishments!

Some of the films you might recognize from Participant Media are An Inconvenient Truth, Charlie Wilson's War and the upcoming Food, Inc. Participant Media also publishes a monthly newsletter that informs their fans and web readers of pressing issues and Fair Trade opportunities. In their latest September issue, Fair Trade Sports was featured as the star athlete by Danny Jensen ("getting your social justice kicks").

Participant Media has taken a step forward in the Entertainment business by interjecting global respect and responsibility into its movies' messages. As a result, Participant Media has spread a message of justice to hundreds of thousands of viewers. The Fair Trade movement intrinsically revolves around respect, and Participant Media is a major player in spreading the Fair Trade message. Their new TakePart platform is definitely worth checking out.