Contact: Active 2001-2002. Want to restart this local campaign? Contact: fairtrade@globalexchange.org

Notes from previous campaign coordinator Robin Ohashi:

June 13 2002

Our group has graduated and I have moved out of the state. We hope the fair trade campaign will continue at UIC, but we do not have a contact person yet.

April 12, 2002 (Robyn Ohashi)

We have completed our portion of the coffee campaign at UIC - Jane Addams School of Social Work. We conducted 4 awareness/ coffee tastings at our college with Fair Trade coffee donated from Java City. We also bought and sold 2 cases of Equal Exchange coffee at cost. During the campaign we collected 61 signatures on a petition asking Cafe Descartes (coffee shop on campus) to start carrying a Fair Trade option by either asking their vendor to order Fair Trade or by switching vendors. We also tried to convince the faculty of our college to order Fair Trade coffee for their faculty lounge by showing them price comparisons and educating them on the issue. Our resources (Powerpoint presentation as well as the video "Santiago Story") will be available to faculty to educate their students on Fair Trade coffee and the effects of globalization.

We will all be graduating at the end of the semester, so we're hesitant to add our names or e-mails to the list. We are hoping that through our efforts others, who will be around next year, will be able to carry on the campaign. However at this point it's just too early to know.

Our campaign will be focused on our college and not the entire university at this time. However, our campaign just got much easier than we expected. Our campus switched vendors and now will be contracting with Java City. Especially since they are brand new to campus, they are more than happy to use this as a promotion for them too. We will be working with them to set up some free tastings.

Thank you for your assistance in our efforts.

February 27, 2002

Our group will be doing a small awareness campaign on our campus. We had to reevaluate our goal of targeting the entire campus and decided to focus mainly on our college (Jane Addams School of Social Work) due to the size of our group and time constraints. Our campus recently changed vendors (this month) and now has a contract with Java City through Aramark. Aramark had already ordered the Fair Trade option before we talked to them and will be offering it daily. So, we have decided to partner with them. They will be offering free samples of the coffee during our 5 educational sessions. We ordered the video Santiago's story and will use that in 3 of our sessions. The other 2 sessions are less formal and we will be doing a shorter educational session. We will also be selling Equal Exchange coffee, so students will have an option of Fair Trade coffee both on campus and at home. Another aspect to our campaign is trying to encourage the faculty of our college to consume Fair Trade coffee in their faculty lounge. We have mainly restricted our campaign to our college, but we have also written to our college newspaper to encourage them to do a piece on Fair Trade coffee and that this option is now available on our campus. We have also talked to some student groups on campus to encourage them to further the Fair Trade campaign on our campus (one of our educational sessions will be to educate a student group on the issue).

Everyone from our group will be graduating in May. While we are hoping that other groups will pick up this issue, we can not make guarantees on that.

January 24, 2002

I am an MSW student and the University of Illinois at Chicago. As part of one of our classes, I am working with a group of 4 other students on an advocacy campaign. We have chosen to start an advocacy campaign on Fair Trade coffee. We have found the information on your website extremely useful, such as the coffee campaign action pack. We have already found one group on campus which will partner with us in our efforts. We just decided this week to start on this project, and have therefore not decided on our action steps at this time. We are however hoping to at least conduct an awareness campaign on our campus.

I already have a question for you. In your action pack, you mentioned giving out free samples of Fair Trade coffee. I am wondering if you have a contact person through one of the companies which offer Fair Trade coffee, or perhaps a packet that includes samples. I know at a conference I attended, Equal Exchange was there to give out free coffee and sell their products. Should I contact them directly? We will give you updates as we move our campaign along. We are just beginning at this time.

Thanks for your help, Robyn Ohashi