Trunk Show at San Francisco GX Store

Tibet Artisan Trunk Show
October 24th-26th

The Global Exchange Fair Trade Store will be hosting a trunk show featuring crafts from the Dropenling Handicraft Development Center of Tibet.

Dropenling is dedicated to improving the lives of Tibetan artisans throughout Tibet by selling only unique, high quality handicrafts made in Tibet, by Tibetans. The name “Dropenling” is a Tibetan word meaning “giving back for the betterment of all mankind.”

Dropenling is a social enterprise designed to provide sustainable, long-term solutions to the promotion and preservation of Tibetan culture. All profits from Dropenling are returned to the artisan community in order to improve their working conditions and livelihood.

Please stop by, help support the Tibetan artisan community and get a taste of the real Tibet!

STORE LOCATION: 4018 24th Street (near Noe) San Francisco, CA 94114 415.648.8068

STORE HOURS: Monday-Friday 11am-7pm Saturday 10am-7pm Sunday 11am-6pm

Our Fair Trade friends Alter Eco need your vote!

Our friends who deliver delicious Fair Trade Certified products like chocolate, sugar and rice are up for the Green Business of the Year award given out by Coop America, and they need all of our votes! See what green consumers are saying about all of the businesses in the running, check out their Web sites, and then vote for your favorite before October 9 here .

Job Posting for D.C. Area Fair Traders

Hey everyone. As you may know, Global Exchange has opened up three new Global Exchange Stores in DC (our first East Coast Stores!). They are connected to the Bus Boys and Poets Cafes so social activism spirit runs rampant. As with any new store, we need people to help out! We are looking for qualified Fair Trade Retail personnel. Information is as follows:

Global Exchange, a San Francisco based non profit organization, is opening several Fair Trade retail stores in conjunction with Busboys and Poets restaurants in the Washington DC area. We are looking to fill full and part time positions.

Necessary skills include:
Minimum 2 years retail experience
Knowledge of and interest in Fair Trade issues
Hard working, willing to maintain a clean and tidy environment
Excellent social and sales skills, interactive with clientele

Send your resume to:shel@globalexchange.org
Please explain your reasons for wanting to work at Global Exchange. If you have any skills that you think would better qualify you, please let us know. If you would like to know more about us, visit us at globalexchange.org and busboysandpoets.com.

Live in the D.C. area and want to join the Global Exchange team? Also, if you know any one in the D.C. area that is interested, pass them along.

Tweet tweet

Hey everyone. In an effort to reach out to the large social network of Fair Traders out there, the Global Exchange Store team continues to dabble in more new media outlets. We've recently signed up for twitter and you can find us @GXFairTrade. For those of you unfamiliar with twitter, it is a microblogging site where we will be posting quick little updates of whats going on with us at the Store that might be too short for a whole blog post (hence the microblogging :) ). So, for any of you readers out there who are already twitter-ing, or would like to join, follow our feed and keep yourself posted!

BART Rider Thank You Day Returns!

Calling all Bay Area Fair Traders! Just got a message from our friends at TransFairUSA who are on the lookout for some fine volunteers to help out with the next BART Rider Thank You Day. It's going to take place on Tuesday, September 23rd in the early, early morning. They need volunteers to pass out coupons for free Fair Trade Numi tea at Tully's. I did it last time, and will likely do it again, and it was honestly a great experience. It was a bit tough waking up before the sun was up, but it was truly an energizing action. Interested in helping out? Find out more at the Bay Area Fair Trade coalition website and join in on the fun.

To further entice you, volunteers get free gifts. That's right...F R E E. Including:

- a $10 BART pass
- a $10 Tully’s Gift Card
- a stylish, limited edition Rider Thank You Day t-shirt
- and your very own, employees only BART logo hat!

Come out and support Fair Trade as well as a sustainable commute. You can also contact us via the comment box for more questions.

Recent Buying Trip to India

In June 2008 Global Exchange Berkeley Store Manager Carolyn Gravely traveled to India for a buying trip. Read about her experiences meeting with artisans:

I was fortunate enough to meet with six different collectives in India. Each group had a different type of craft and focus for their collective.

The first group I visited was called Shradhanjali ("gift of trust") in Auroville. There I found beautiful contemporary cards, coasters and placemats, made from recycled handmade paper with organic flower designs. Their purchase helps to support village people who make the items and live around Auroville, an international spiritual community in its 40th year.

Next stop was Sandur, a collective of Lambani tribal women, where I was amazed by the beautiful embroidered textiles. Each piece a true work of art, Lambani embroidery is an amalgam of pattern darning, mirror work, cross stitch, and overlaid and quilting stitches with borders of "Kangura" patchwork appliqué, done on loosely woven dark blue or red handloom base fabric, reflecting the women's own traditional dress. The income from their sale directly helps the children as well as the women, whose husbands work in the iron and manganese mines.

[Read the rest of the article...]

S'mores on YouTube

Hey folks. We mentioned yesterday that we would post the YouTube video from the S'mores event and post a video we did. If you'd like (and we really encourage you to), you can get in on the action yourself and roast up some Fair Trade S'mores, make a video of it and post it for the rest of the Fair Trade community to see. Enjoy!

S'more photos of s'mores

Summertime S'mores with Fair Trade Chocolate

They want more for their S'mores!

Global Exchange Interns, Renee and Zach, hold up the very impressive banner they made.

Yesterday was Labor Day and that marked the end of summer for most of us. Although for those of us in San Francisco, Summer is just beginning since the sun always shows up a little later in our nook of the country. Since no one wants to say goodbye to summer, us folks at Global Exchange are keeping the memory alive and sharing some photos from our Fair Trade Chocolate S'mores Happy Hour we had a few weeks ago. As you may remember, the event was a gathering of people from all over the Bay gathering together to make some fair trade summertime treats. The event was a big success with a great turnout of Fair Trade veterans as well as some Fair Trade first timers. There were even some people in the crowd that were having S'mores for the very first time and were proud to say that their first S'more was made using Fair Trade chocolate. Heartwarming, right? The message is spreading! Check out our photo montage...

Firing up the grill

Global Exchange Fair Trade Campaign Director, Adrienne, stands in line ready to get in on the Fair Trade action

A small taste of the Fair Trade chocolate offered. Thanks Alter Eco!
Fair Trade taste test. Final verdict? Delicious.

Look for the label!

Perfect San Francisco Summer S'more evening

We're currently uploading more of the photos onto our kyte.tv channel so you'll be able to relive the event there soon enough. In more online media news, we will be posting the YouTube! video from the event. Stay tuned...