Fair Trade spreads among college students

            On May 8, after the weekly Chapel service, students could grasp a cup of ice coffee amid the day’s hot weather. Drinking this ice coffee, not many Ewha students could have imagined their simple action influenced the children inEast Timor . But, yes, in terms of fair trade, the selection of even basic daily items can affect others living far away.

       This coffee was provided by Café Timor; an organization that promotes fair trade coffee fromEast Timor .

       Café Timor is located near the Ewha subway station. The Ewha Cooperative Store also sells fair trade coffee beans, chocolates, sugar and olive oil. Like this, the concept of fair trade is very close to Ewha students.

      “Fair Trade” is a movement that fosters to provide fair wages to producers in third world counties. These countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia andAfrica depend highly on coffee bean and cacao bean outputs; however, in current international trade rules set by the World Trade Organization only 0.5 percentage of selling price goes to the original bean producers in those third world countries while multinational corporations take rest of the profit.

According to the International Fair Trade Association, the fair trade movement started from certain stores in the and the by sellingPuerto Rico ’s needlework and Chinese refugees’ artifacts in 1946. Its trade’ specialty is in the presence of a coordinator in the trade process. The coordinator observes how the trading process works fairly for the original producers and approves the product as a fair trade product by attaching a sign on surface of the product.

The fair trade movement was then spread among developed countries such as , and . In 2006, the movement started to spread in . The Korea Fair Trade Association (KFTA) was established as the first Korean non-governmental organization in the concept. Its main job is to run an off and online fair trade store and campaign the concept.  

 “The practical help for those in third world countries is to buy their products through this fair trade. Thus, Ullim, our off and online store, has its goal to make known more various fair trade goods to Korean customers,” said Park Chang-soon, the president of the KFTA.

   Other than the KFTA, several other NGOs and Social Enterprises cover this movement in. Fair Trade , Beautiful Store and Dure Cooperative Store are among them. They sell the fair trade products mostly on online and promote the movement by holding campaign events or lectures in universities. The president of Fair Trade , Lee Mi-young also regularly visits universities to promote the movement. Currently, Lee held a lecture atYonseiUniversity on May 8 and will come to Ewha on June 4.

    Meanwhile, college students promote a campaign to let free trade be widely known to others. On May 9, which was the World Fair Trade Day in 2009, university students held a campaign beside Deoksugung palace’s wall. The Good Trade, a student club campaigning for fair trade, presented the making process of handmade coffee inEast Timor . “I hope more people are aware of fair trade,” said Yoo In-seon (KookminUniversity , 3), the president of the club. All 10 members of the club went toEast Timor as a volunteer last year to help in the making process of fair trade coffee beans from YMCA.

Seoul NationalUniversity students also held a fashion show in which they were dressed in organic fair trade clothing during the festival.