Articles
Hot Chocolate Bar with Toppings
Winter days and bad weather mean… hot chocolate season! Share a steaming cup of cocoa with friends, dressed up with custom toppings. Line up your favorite fixings and gather a group for a DIY hot chocolate bar.
Get Inspired with Holiday Gift Baskets
Support your community and small-scale farmers around the world by offering conscious consumers meaningful and unique gift basket options. Consumable gifts like coffee, tea and chocolate are wonderful because they won’t collect dust on a shelf and are good gifts for “the person who has everything”.
The Basic Elements of Coffee Brewing
As you brew with care, you honor the hard work of our small-scale farmer partners and join a community of Equal Exchange coffee lovers. Here are the basic elements of coffee brewing.
Choosing Coffee to Serve Your Group
Equal Exchange offers congregations and community groups a convenient, affordable way to serve coffee that's aligned with their values and promotes justice. Here’s a quick guide to choosing the right coffee to serve to your group.
Why Switch to Fair Trade, Organic Coffee?
When it comes to drinking ethically-sourced coffee, you have a choice if you’re at home, but how can you get your church, office, or school to start serving Equal Exchange’s organic, fairly traded coffee?
Inspiration for Your Holiday Sale
We collected some of our favorite creative, yet simple display ideas for holiday sales during Christmas, Hanukkah and beyond!
Coordinator Extraordinaire: Dorothy Killebrew and Grandview UMC
Dorothy Killebrew is a member of Grandview United Methodist Church in Lancaster, PA, one of Equal Exchange’s top faith-based accounts. Hear from Dorothy on how her congregation connects with fair trade and social justice.
Your Fair Trade Holiday Sale Made Easy
A holiday sale is a great way to bring fair trade gift options to your community. Whether you’re raising money for your group’s projects or and encouraging folks to engage in ethical gift purchasing with a social justice mission, here are some of our best tips for a successful table sale!
Scott Williams and his Extraordinary Team at Central Christian Church
Scott Williams of the Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Lebanon, Indiana, started learning about marginalized groups in Central America after 2001, when he visited Honduras with his son, Andy and friends on their first trip abroad.
Sara Anderson: Coordinator Extraordinaire at UU Church of Arlington
Sara Anderson, a member of the UU Church of Arlington, VA shared the story of how her church community got involved with fair trade and how they use the profits from their Equal Exchange sales in a tremendously giving way.
Plan a Fair Trade Sale Using These 5 Tips
Selling fairly traded coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa and snacks to your community is a way to give them an opportunity to buy high-quality, fairly traded gifts for the holidays and add some additional income for your group. Here are 5 tips for how to make a successful sale happen.
Choose the Right Products for Your Equal Exchange Sale
Hosting a fair trade sale, holiday fair, or gift market is a great way to introduce your community to ethically-sourced products or make a little money for your cause. Here are some guidelines to take the guesswork out of ordering.
How to Store Coffee
A lot of effort goes into growing, shipping, roasting and packaging coffee to ensure a great-tasting cup. However, the benefits of those efforts can be lost at the very end of the line: in your own home. The way you store coffee has a profound impact on its taste and shelf life, so here we will explore the best ways to keep your beans fresh and delicious — plus a few pitfalls to avoid.
Have a Contact-Free Fair Trade Sale
Offering fairly traded and organic coffee, tea, chocolate and cocoa to your community provides an opportunity to buy meaningful, high quality gifts and can even add some additional income for your own group’s special projects and programs.
Susan Domey-Allen: Coordinator Extraordinaire at UCC Norwell
UCC Norwell is a great example of a church that lives out its values by promoting fair trade products. We’re highlighting social justice activist and top Equal Exchange supporter Susan Domey-Allen of UCC Norwell in Massachusetts. Susan recently shared their fair trade story and a variety of ways to reach out to others to ensure sure that purchases of chocolate don’t contribute to slave labor, human trafficking, and injustice for cacao producers.
A Conversation with Edith Stacey-Huber
Edith Stacey-Huber is passionate about food. She is the creator of the food buying club Authentic Provisions just outside of Ann Arbor, Mich. Authentic Provisions aims to reconnect people in the community to the food, land, and farmers who sustain them, through collective purchasing outside of the corporate food system.
Extraordinary Coordinators at Trinity Lutheran Church
Carolyn Boone’s church brews fairly traded coffee at gatherings and sells a variety of Equal Exchange products once a month after services. Every year, they rank among Equal Exchange’s top customers! What’s their secret? We thought we’d give Carolyn the change to tell you, in her own words!
Extraordinary Coordinators at UU Fellowship of Vero Beach
This is the story of the Fair Trade Corner at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Vero Beach as related by Pam Pelliccia. It’s the history of the UUSC Fair Trade Project at the Fellowship and highlights Gale Parmentier, who is retiring, and played a key role in the growth and success of their program.
Carol Bjelland: Coordinator Extraordinaire at Ascension Lutheran Church
Carol Bjelland, a member of the fair trade committee at Ascension Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks, CA is a shining example of an organizer who has taken the church community’s commitment to choosing ethically sourced products to another level.
Extraordinary Coordinators at Bethesda Lutheran
At our church, Fair Trade represents justice and equality. Every time we make a purchase, we can choose whether the implications of this purchase are equal or just. When I look in a cup of Fair Trade coffee, I see a farmer overcoming poverty, her daughter attending school, her son visiting a medical clinic, and her community benefiting.