Celebrating World Fair Trade Day, part 1

Yannina decided that Manos Amigas would celebrate World Fair Trade Day (the second Saturday in May) in two ways. The first was to rent a booth (with the rest of the Peruvian members of the WFTO) at a downtown small-business fair to distribute flyers and talk about fair trade with passersby. The second was to visit a school to talk about fair trade. That gets its own separate post, later this week.

The booth space at the fair was theirs for four days, and each of the seven Peruvian WFTO member organizations drew lots for the time it needed to staff the booth. Yannina asked us to cover Manos Amigas’ time, the first day from 9-2. It was obvious Yannina was super stressed with getting orders filled and packed, and we were happy to help provide her with much-desired time in the office.

As with everything else, it was pretty haphazardly “organized” but came together at the last minute. At 5 pm the day before, Yannina wondered out loud if we should distribute anything about Manos Amigas. She finally decided we should give out Christina’s business cards, but we needed to remember to correct the email address on the cards before distributing them.

She also gave us a giant stuffed llama to display (each organization had agreed to bring a large, eye-catching object to draw in people), and as we were leaving really early the next morning to set up, we got to take the llama home with us overnight.

Simon loved having the llama in our apartment, gave it many hugs and pats, and asked if the llama could be part of storytime before bed. Sam acquiesced. He even read them one of Simon’s favorites, Is Your Mama a Llama? The llama listened attentively.

The next morning, we got to take a taxi since the giant llama wouldn’t travel well on a bus. We’d probably have to pay its fare, too!

We got to the booth much later than expected, but it didn’t matter. While we thought we were the only ones staffing the WFTD booth, there were seven other people from four other organizations, slowly putting their organizations’ materials up. We had only the llama to contribute to the setup, and everyone was content to work alone to put their materials out, so we played around until the booth was finished at noon, 3 hours after it was supposed to open.

Right next to our booth was a little gathering space, and when a seemingly random dance show preceding a public health presentation started up, we were among the riveted watchers.

The finished booth, at noon

One of the booth walls. The other organizations brought beautiful photos and materials displaying their work.

The flyering was great, though. We talked to probably 50 people between 12-2 and distributed Christina’s business cards. At 1:30 one of the organizations arrived with some brochures we could hand out, which were excellent, except that Manos Amigas’ email address had a typo. Oh well.

What I was particularly surprised by was how many of the people we talked to were artisans themselves. How can I be part of fair trade, they would ask. We would give them the brochure, which included all the contact information for all seven members, and tell them to bring product samples to each one, after calling. 

Sam kept Simon asleep during part of our shift. Fermín, one of my favorite artisans, period, stopped by the booth for awhile as he is a member of APTEC, a member of the WFTO.

I am curious to know if they - potential producers - were the intended target audience for the flyering, or if the group had wanted to reach potential consumers of fair trade instead. Regardless, hopefully each organization is ready for the onslaught of people who may call now, looking for ways to sell their products.