Fair Trade Tour to the Dominican Republic 2012

If you watched the March legislative meeting, you may have heard that I will be attending a “Fair Trade Tour” of the Dominican Republic this coming week along with representatives from towns around the United States.

The tour is organized by Fair Trade USA in cooperation with Global Exchange.

The goal of the trip is to provide real-world understanding of what Fair Trade does for other countries in terms of bringing a better standard of living for the workers, as well as better working conditions and better quality of life overall.

Note that the trip comes at no cost to Media taxpayers.

While it may sound glamorous, the trip will include visiting farms where Fair Trade products are produced, we’ll hear from citizens of the Dominican Republic whose lives have changed because of fair trade, and we’ll even go out into the fields and pick cocoa/coffee beans and see how fair trade goods are collected and produced. So, it’s somewhat of a back-country, rustic tour of farms in the Dominican Republic.

In terms of the accommodations, they will be sparse; apparently this year they’ll have mattresses at all of the places we’ll be staying. We’ll also stay at a farm for at least one night or more.

Philadelphia Airport at Dawn

I plan on posting as often as possible to America’s First Fair Trade Committee’s Facebook page, and I’ll cross-post here if necessary.

If you haven’t like the America’s First Fair Trade Committee’s Facebook page, please do so. Also, please check out America’s First Fair Trade Town website.

If you support Fair Trade, please comment here, or on the Facebook page.