What is Fair Trade?
• Fair Trade helps farmers (more than 1.2 million worldwide) in developing countries build sustainable businesses that positively influence their communities. • Products that bear the Fair Trade logo come from farmers and workers who are justly compensated. • The rigorous Fair Trade standards ensure that farmers and workers enjoy safe working conditions, regulated work hours, maternity leave and freedom of association. Slave and child labor are strictly prohibited. • Fair Trade ensures that farmers follow internationally monitored environmental standards and also provides financial incentives and resources for organic conversion, reforestation, water conservation and environmental education. • Fair Trade empowers women to play an active role in their families and in their co-ops by starting businesses with guaranteed access to health care, certain job rights and freedom from harassment. • Fair Trade supports education with revenues set aside to build schools and maintain enrollment.
Fortaleza del Valle Cooperative
As in previous years, to help tell the stories about the people behind their food, Fair Trade has paired every blogger participating in this event with a farmer. Meet my match: Mariana del Jesus Mendoza, a cocoa farmer & member of the Fortaleza del Valle Cooperative in Ecuador. Mariana notes: “Thanks to Fair Trade we are able to sell our cacao at fair and stable prices. Before we were organized into Fortaleza del Valle, many of us did not know how to take true advantage of our plants’ capacities and would ruin them with pesticides and fungicides.”
Cookie monsters …
5 from 4 reviews Note: For best results, make the dough ahead of time: after mixing the dough, portion it into 48 g balls and refrigerate the balls in an airtight container for at least 24 hours and up to 1 week.
