This weekend, my wife Alicia, a student named Evan, and I went to the Freedom Center downtown to check out a Fair Trade Market that was put together by the Unbound Movement. For those of you unfamiliar with the Unbound Movement, it is a movement (obviously) started by a group of students and leaders at Crossroads Church to end modern day slavery. Needless to say we checked it out on Saturday and it was an incredible experience.
On the 3rd floor of the Freedom Center they had an Experience Station set up to let participants get an idea what it was like to live as a modern day slave. The experience was called Restevek (which is what child slaves are called in Haiti). Overall it was sobering to see the things that they are required to do, and their quality of life is just horrendous. It's not something we want to think about, but its real and its happening all over.
Our student ministry has really been trying to teach students about what it means to seek justice and learn to do right in their community and world. Isaiah 1:17 says, "Learn to do right, seek justice, encourage the oppressed, plead the case of the widow, defend the case of the fatherless." We all need to take verse like that to heart and apply it to who we are and how we live. The Unbound Movement is a great example of that.
We took our Flip Camera and did some quick interviews with some of the different organizations at the Fair Trade Market. For those of you not familiar with what Fair Trade is let me try to sum it up. The idea of Fair Trade is to pay workers a fair amount for their work, especially in impoverished areas where they are normally incredibly underpaid. So check out what these groups had to say, and then check their websites out, because they are doing some pretty cool stuff and really applying what the Bible says about seeking justice.
La Terza Coffee
Their Website
Chuck from La Terza from Parkside Students on Vimeo.
I used some of my birthday money to get some of the coffee that La Terza makes in the Dominican Republic. I didn't get a chance to brew any of it yet, but the sample I got on Saturday was great!
10,000 Villages
Their Website
Connie from 10,000 Villages from Parkside Students on Vimeo.
Alicia and I bought some soap from 10,000 Villages. They also had an incredibly cool Marriage Sculpture that would make an awesome wedding present. Connie goes to University Christian Church to which has a long history with Parkside. Pretty cool stuff!
Trade As One
Their Website
Kevin Madsen who works for Trade as One, spoke for one of the breakout sessions, and we have a video for it that we are still uploading and I'll try to get it on the blog later this week. We ended up getting a lot of stuff from Trade As One's display area. They are real focused on their Fair Trade Products being quality things that you would already need. We got a awesome mint chocolate bar that was made in Bolivia, and we got some of our friends some surprises too. They had some really cool stuff and their website has a pretty cool video that tells a lot of their company's goals and values.
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