Tonight, I may also have made a small breakthrough. I asked a certain Starbucks-frequenting friend to accompany me to the screening, and while most friends excuse themselves one way or another, (so I braced myself for the answer) she, said she would "love to" attend. I suppose it could have been the atmosphere and that everyone who had turned up for the showing of the film was a "Fairtrade activist" in one way or another, but I saw a change in her immediately after the film that no "preaching" (which I am guilty of when friends have urged me into a Starbucks) had ever successfully accomplished. Seeing the film had demonstrated to her what my words were never able to convey, I believe.
The concern in her eyes as she turned to me and said, "I want to do something, but I don't know how," filled me with a hope which I had not felt for some time. Then she voiced her fears.
"I see these things [happening in developing countries] and I want to help, but I have no idea how, so I tend to ignore the issue and carry on."
The idea had never occurred to me. Education is the most valuable tool anyone can have, and Black Gold had opened my friend's eyes in a way I had never thought to. I know many of my friends do not read this blog, but it had never occurred to me that they would not already know why fair trade is important and how it can change the economics of a developing country like Ethiopia. I had always trusted my instincts and rather narcissistically believed that if people around me could see why I was passionate about something, then surely they could see its importance.
But not every consumer knows the impact, or the power they have over the coffee market for example. That the deciding price of coffee beans are made not in Ethiopia, Kenya, or London, but at the New York stock market. That coffee farmers in Rwanda were once denied a right to a fair price for their coffee beans because Starbucks refused to give them the trademark rights of the coffee they were selling on to their middle class customers. That some coffee farmers get so little for every pound of coffee they sell that to translate that amount into English is impossible because there is nothing smaller than the pence in our language. That a "fair price" does not mean enough money so that these farmers can go and buy cars, or big houses for themselves. A "fair price" means enough money to provide enough nutritional food and an education for the members if their families.
My last comment then, is that once you know about something, it's even easier to do something about it. The hard bit was discovering that something that you care about passionately. Find that something, and hold on to it, whatever it is. Research it, read up on it, act on it.
Because switching to buying Fairtrade really is just the first step.
Fairtrade isn't charity, it's justice.
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