In celebration of Earth Day (April 22), I’m pleased to announce all Fair Trade Sports balls are now being equipped with certified latex by the Forest Stewardship Council.

FSC certification is the same eco-label you see on other forest products at Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Kinko’s. Products bearing the FSC logo guarantee that the product (in our case, latex) came from a certified well-managed forest.

As we discussed earlier, the air bladders inside each of our sports balls - such as our fairly traded rugby ball - are made of latex. This latex now comes from our rubber tree forest in India which has been certified both FSC and Fair Trade.

I hope you are able to enjoy Earth Day outside with family and friends!

Susan and I have been fans of Global Exchange for quite awhile. We’re thrilled to have GX on board as one of our wholesale accounts.

Should your team or store be interested in ordering Fair Trade soccer balls and more in bulk quantities, please refer to our volume discount price guide.

As we mentioned earlier, Cabrini College in PA grabbed the honor of “first ever” for a campus wallyball tourney recently. Here are the photos from the CRS “Play Fair Trade Fair” event.

I’m digging the use of our brand stickers as an apparel accessory.

To quote from Jessica Hagerty’s article:

“The volleyballs we will be using were made from people in another country and we can feel confident that they earned fair wages,” Coordinator of Student-Athlete Wellness Jackie Neary said.

Fair Trade is an association of fair trade wholesalers, retailers and producers whose members are committed to providing fair wages and good employment opportunities to economically disadvantaged artisans and farmers worldwide.

Sports balls are one of Fair Trade’s many products. Other products include chocolate, coffee, sugar, cotton products, honey and flowers.

The event is supported by the athletic department’s director of athletics and recreation Leslie Danehy, assistant director of recreation Orlin Jespersen, administrative coordinator Amanda Eckenroad and Neary.

“The athletic and recreation departments are very proud to be participating in this event because it is a very important issue that people should be aware of,” Neary said.

A soccer tournament using Fair Trade soccer balls is another event that the departments wish to pursue.

Does your high school or college campus have a Fair Trade initiative? Let’s see how many more Fair Trade tourneys we can get going with intramural systems and club sports teams!

More Cabrini photos here.

Interesting intersections that happen when you are least expecting it are the ones that make me smile the most.

Yesterday I was glancing through my Google Alerts and found a reference to both fairtrade soccer balls and Fair Indigo, the hip new apparel company from Madison, WI.

I popped over to Just Things - a good source for an “applied counter-economics” perspective on the Fair Trade movement - to read through the candid  interview with Fair Indigo’s Bill Bass and Rob Behnke.

Bill was walking journalist Steve Herrick through his design department when they spotted one of our fairly traded children’s soccer balls. An interesting and insightful discussion about the pros/cons of partnerships between fair trade companies ensued.

I’m already a fan of their apparel line. One of my favorite shirts is their logo tee - amazingly soft and lots of folks ask about the tagline “style with a conscience” when I wear it around town.

Position yourself as a true hipster at the local park by snagging your own fairtrade children’s soccer ball *before* the next Fair Indigo catalog comes out. Then you’ll be able to show your kids the catalog and reap their adoration for being on the cutting edge of hipness. At least that’s what I’m planning to do.

:)

Our friends in the Labor Rights movement just launched a writing|art contest for students to raise awareness of child labor in the chocolate industry.

The first prize for the winning student essay|art in each category is a youth soccer ball from Fair Trade Sports.

If you have kids in grades 3-12, please encourage them to enter!

When you do alot of public speaking, you quickly learn the definition of a “great question” from the audience.

It’s the question that you have a ready answer for - one that helps reinforce a point you made earlier in your talk.

Here’s an example:

Question: Does my Fair Trade store/market need fairly traded youth soccer balls?

Answer: Great question! Yes, it does. And I know where you can find a supply of them.

:)

Here’s what Dick Meyer, proprietor of the Traditions Fair Trade store in Washington state, says about our fairly traded sports balls:

Fair Trade Sports balls fill an important niche in getting new groups of people aware of the importance of fair trade. The quality of the product and the service from Fair Trade Sports provide great opportunities to reach schools and athletic organizations to have them buy responsibly.

Another proponent of fairly traded sports balls is Sarah Davison-Tracy from Colorado. She founded the Seeds of Exchange market and recently commented:

The prompt delivery and personal attention from Fair Trade Sports for our wholesale ordering is terrific! Their fairly traded sports balls are the perfect addition to our monthly markets and are a great complement to our Fair Trade product selection.

You can order volumes of fairly traded futsal balls, soccer balls, volleyballs, and rugby balls from our site - your volume discounts are automatically applied - or by contacting us directly with your order details. Wholesale price guide here.

Just got back from Boston - a beautiful city currently wearing a blanket of ice from a recent Nor’easter - for a Fair Trade event called Convergence.

Convergence is an annual event that gathers 300+ Fair Trade activists from high school and college campuses nationwide, hosted by United Students for Fair Trade.

Lots of learning and planning goes on during the multi-day event. This year I saw and heard alot of excitement from both high school students and college students about bringing fairly traded sports balls to their campuses.

Check out what Cabini College in PA has already launched - the country’s first Fair Trade Wallyball Tournament, featuring our Fair Trade Sports volleyballs.

This “Play Fair, Trade Fair” event is part of a larger CRS campaign the students and faculty are pursuing on campus. Well done, Cavaliers!

Children love soccer. But many of the world’s children live in poverty and have never played with a real soccer ball.

Instead, they play with balls made of rags, banana leaves, or wads of plastic tied together with string. This video from World Vision shows how much care and effort a 12-year-old boy in Africa invests in making his own soccer ball.

Join us as move move towards a more positive world where children around the world are encouraged and equipped to play. When you need a new soccer ball, please consider purchasing a Fair Trade Sports soccer ball and donating your current gently-used soccer ball to the World Vision “Get a Kick Out of Sharing” program.

Rally your organization or team to start collecting these items and send boxes of deflated balls and pumps with your donation form to:

World Vision Gifts-in-Kind Distribution Center
Soccer Ball Program
210 Overlook Drive
Sewickley, PA 15143

Fair Trade Sports is proud to be a member of the Fair Trade Federation. 

Membership means we adhere to standards and principals that pursue an equitable and fair partnership between marketers in North America like Fair Trade Sports, and the producers of our products around the world. 

For us, that is specific to Sialkot, Pakistan, the producer of 80% of all sports balls in the world, including our fairly traded soccer balls and more. 

A Fair Trade partnership works to provide low-income producers with a living wage for their work. Among many criteria, FTF membership includes:

• Paying a fair wage in the local context
  
  
• Being open to public accountability
  
  
• Building long-term trade relationships
  
  
• Providing healthy and safe working conditions within the local context
  
  
• Providing financial and technical assistance to the producers of our products whenever possible
  
• Engaging in environmentally sustainable practices
  

Here’s a quick visual tour of how we create that high-quality, hand-stitched Fair Trade Sports soccer ball that is conveniently delivered to your front porch.

From flat designs on paper…

…our Master Printers and Cutters create and divide the 32 panel pieces…

…for our adult stitchers receiving Fair Trade wages to hand-stitch.

Bushra is pictured here, holding a completed Fair Trade Sports soccer ball.

The final Fair Trade Sports soccer balls are packed and shipped from our Pakistani partner to our Seattle fulfillment warehouse…

…ready for you to purchase!