holiday cookies!

Check out the order form (scroll down a bit) for new holiday cookies! I am selling them as of now (for older orders I'm happy to make the old kinds).

If you want to place a big order, I'm happy to make different kinds of cookies.

Also, keep checking for information on an actual website and a way to donate money. Next week it should be as easy as going to a TD Canada Trust Bank and depositing into a specific account. I looked into doing online donations, but it makes operating costs too high and I would have to begin taking money away from the feeding and putting it towards administrative costs... doesn't seem right to me just yet.

we're going fair trade!

A while ago, I got an email asking if any of the cookies I was selling were fair trade. Embarrassingly, I had to respond no… I was too preoccupied with finding the cheapest ingredients to think about making things fair trade. It seemed highly unethical to be feeding Liberians while exploiting their neighbours so I started to look around. After some research and emailing, I found a bulk supplier, Cocoa Camino, who sells for a minimal price difference. Obviously, the products (chocolate and sugar) will be more expensive, only because they are paying the producers reasonable prices that reflect the cost of their labour. So. I’m spending the new few days experimenting with how turbinado sugar differs from the regular white and brown sugar I used to buy.

Initially, I was going to leave it at this little announcement but yesterday I was standing in line to get coffee and started eaves dropping on the conversation beside me. There were two guys there, one from Jamaica (I eavesdropped a lot) and the other a pretty generic looking white guy (who I have since dubbed ‘self-centered asshole’) anyway. He was making the decision between buying fair trade and not fair trade and launched into this heated speech about why he doesn’t see the point in buying fair trade. He couldn’t possibly understand why he would pay more for the exact same product just to say that it was fair trade. His friend responded by saying that he understood that and instead just gets his dad to pick up the coffee, chocolate and sugar while at the source so he pays less money (avoids marketing and packaging costs) but still can rest assured that he’s not eating his cheap food at the expense of others. I was late for class at this point so I couldn’t tell the self-centered guy exactly what I thought about him, but it got me thinking nonetheless. I suppose information about fair trade isn’t as prominent as I thought so… here is an overview.

Up until today, I bought my sugar from Redpath Sugar, a Canadian subsidiary of American Sugar Refining Inc, and my chocolate from Hershey. While information about chocolate and Hershey is widespread on the internet, there is very little about sugar, which says something in and of itself. Neither Redpath nor American Sugar Refining Ltd makes any mention of fair trade practices, which doesn’t bode well for their workers. You can check out the Redpath website to see what is involved with the production, but long story short is it is a labour-intensive process… the process is largely controlled by a handful of multinational corporations (with limited accountability) that play off the desperation of the workers. Workers are often placed in unsafe conditions where they complete backbreaking work for minimal compensation. You’d think with all the adds we play on TV about safe working conditions, we might look outside our own borders a little more seriously.

Stories about Hershey’s violations are much more pronounced… Despite the protocols put in place by the US government, very little change has actually materialized. Hershey and M&M continue to control over two-thirds of the $13 billion American industry, and are essentially accountable only to themselves. Out of the global market ($60 billion) it is estimated that roughly 1% of it is Fair Trade certified.

About 43% of the world’s chocolate comes from Cote d’Ivoire, located between Ghana and Liberia. At the end of the day, it simply seems highly unethical to feed some Liberians through the exploitation of others. I’d encourage everybody to try and buy fair trade at every opportunity, but that’s likely not possible. If nothing else, these cookies are at least a start.

So, as of December 1^st, our chocolate and sugar will come from Cocoa Camino. They have chocolate producer co-operatives in the Dominican Republic and Peru, and sugar producer co-operatives in Paraguay and Costa Rica. The relationship between Cocoa Camino and the co-operatives ensures transparency, respect and fairness throughout the production and distribution process. They emphasize this on both human and environmental levels, in order to promote sustainability and high quality.

ordering online through google

thanks to people who know much more about computer than me, check out this new trick..

remember, $5 for 6 cookies, $10 for 12, and $10 for one roll of frozen dough.

this is waaay too cool. it will be permanently further down on the right hand side of the blog.

kind of a big deal

http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/443429

dumping on optimism

last week i went to my lecture on religion and democracy, where my prof makes all sorts of strange political terminology jokes about the state of our class participation. that day however, she was a little less nuts... she made a point that i've been thinking about since last wednesday (you know, the day after history was made..). it ties into what i'm doing here in a broad sort of way, and after a lot of thought i have decided to, yes, blog about it.

so. here is the question she raised in regards to the previous night's election results. are we ready to put into practice the change we have shouted so much about? are we ready to realize that this system we see as sick and corrupt stretches far beyond the executive in the US and right into our homes and the way we live our lives? are we ready to do anything about it?

we can all congratulate americans on getting out and voting, and for democracy actually working as it is supposed to. that is an incredible feat and the fact that enough people even ticked the box beside obama's name is something to undeniably be proud of. but, what next?

we just had a debate in a different class over policy versus grassroots. its a personal decision for which you value more, but at the end of the day.. you need both. each is useless without the other. so, now we have a real stab at policy changes.. maybe not to the scale that some of us would like to see because, lets face it, obama is bound by a pretty old and solid institution that won't be shaken by one guys four (optimistically eight) years in office. but what about on the other end? leaving it to the american executive is in my opinion, a bit lazy and totally irresponsible.. it may be powerful, but it sure as hell can't handle the world.

my point here is that we all talk about how inspired we were by the speech.. the number of times i've heard 'yes we can' is beyond belief. its great, but what exactly is everybody so inspired to do? sit back and watch obama make changes? i think people might be sadly let down in that case... depends where your issues are though. for liberian refugees that aren't living in the worst refugee crisis in existence.. i'm thinking that will be pretty low on the priorety list. mortages and the economy (which has a pretty little effect on me right now) is obviously something for obama and not me, but what about everything else?

so. what is it that we're all so inspired to do? call me out on this if you think i'm way off or have been made the most depressive and cynical person in the world after four years in development studies and a few months in africa. i'd love to see otherwise. obviously it won't be an overnight change, but so far, from what i see, its the same old situation just with some new faces and a breath of excitement. what happens next after we get over the fact that we've made (or i guess for canadians, witnessed) history?

sounds of buduburam

it seems fitting that tonight i post the song i reluctantly woke up to every morning on camp..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7ypwvpGAA8

suppose obamamania stretches way beyond kenya. could this change reach america's only african colony?