for more information about Global Exchange's national campaign, please see the Questions & Answers on the Background page.
June-August, 2000 Global Exchange has been working with the SCAA to develop a workplan for their newly created Fair Trade Working Group. We have identified key areas in which the trade association, in an historic move, can help to play a leadership role in promoting Fair Trade amongst its members, including officially endorsing Fair Trade Certification, educating its members through trade publications, assisting in research needs, and helping to channel funding resources for product quality improvement to Fair Trade cooperatives.
April 14-18, 2000 We attended the Specialty Coffee Association of America, titled "Quality, Sustainability, and Social Responsibility." Fair Trade and discussions of fairness and sustainability played a major role in the conference, held in San Francisco.
April 13, 2000 Local groups organized Starbucks Victory and Tully's actions in SF
February 4, 2000 We organized a local protest as a result of an investigative report by ABC-affiliate KGO in San Francisco exposed child labor and incredibly low wages in plantations in Guatemala, some of which sell coffee to Starbucks.
October 17-24, 1999 We helped to host Santiago Rivera, a farmer from San Francisco's Sister City of Estelí, Nicaragua, for an event with San Francisco Supervisor and living wage advocate Tom Ammiano and a week-long series of meetings with community groups.
June-August 1999 We increased the retail outlets that offer Fair Trade Certified coffee from just 4 to over 100 in just a few months! Our volunteers set up informational tables at many local events, hosted speakers on Fair Trade coffee at local schools and churches, and brought awareness to the need to purchase Fair Trade to a critical mass of people in the Bay Area.
Summer 1999 Global Exchange began spearheading a campaign to promote Fair Trade coffee, focusing our campaign on our local Bay Area. We organized a coalition of interested human rights, environmental, church, social justice, and student organizations that believed in the model of Fair Trade and wanted to help promote living wages for farmers. We outreached to the local press and generated stories about Fair Trade in the Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Contra Costa Times, San Francisco Examiner, and San Jose Mercury News about Fair Trade coffee.
May 1999 San Francisco city council passes a resolution written and promoted by Global Exchange in favor of Fair Trade.
