Teens Ditch Fast Fashion, Food for Fair Trade
When it comes to fashion and domestic décor, Maya Westbrook wants all of us to understand that honest change items can look simply precise. “I suppose loads of human beings have this assumption that it’s hippie-dippy, but it can be stylish and funky and sublime,” she says.
This beyond the weekend, Westbrook and other Whitney Young High School students led tours of a home full of ethically produced patron items like linens, clothing, and décor as part of the 11th annual World Fair Trade party at Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue. The fair change enterprise version guarantees people are given truthful wages and safe running conditions while using environmentally sustainable practices. The stylish home is without a doubt Fourth Presbyterian’s clergy house. It was converted right into a fair exchange showplace through the occasion’s organizers, nonprofit Chicago Fair Trade.
Fairtrade is a reason near Westbrook’s coronary heart – she’s even co-founding father of Whitney Young’s Fair Trade Club. She believes while people find out about fair trade, they’ll purchase honest change. “I was somebody who shopped several rapid styles, and I truly like clothes, and once I discovered out approximately how many baby workers worked in the garb enterprise, they were just like the identical age as me, and it’s clearly scary to imagine humans operating in the one’s situations. I don’t want to put every person via that inadvertently with the aid of helping companies who assist the one’s practices.”
Earlier this month, Whitney Young became the primary honest trade certified college in Chicago, which means that they’ve dedicated themselves to teaching their college students about honest change practices and using fair change goods of their own operations.
Chicago Fair Trade executive director Katherine Bissell Cordova says the idea of fair trade obviously resonates with younger human beings. “We’re really trying to construct a motion here, and we understand that so that it will do that; you need youth leaders who can be going to carry this on. You get to them once they’re younger, and they get it. Think about your youngsters: ‘It’s not fair!’ – you hear it continuously. Who disagrees that we have to be fair? We’ve gotten into this real mentality of a race to the lowest loads of times, I suppose, with patron items. We all every single day devour, drink, positioned garb on, and all of these, whilst we try this, whether or not we adore it or not, we’re honestly impacting the lives of humans that we don’t recognize, and we don’t see halfway throughout the globe. If you don’t realize wherein it came from, there’s chances are it possibly became made someplace in which someone they’re no longer paid an excellent salary.”
In the event’s marketplace, thirteen-year-old Evan Robinson sold pastries made from truthful trade components in a pop-up bake save to gain organizations that combat human trafficking. A former “MasterChef Junior” contestant, Robinson says he changed into inspired to sign up for the truthful exchange movement after attending a recent convention. “A guy from UNICEF talked, and he simply sort of broke my heart due to the fact he was speaking approximately human trafficking, and the way big of a hassle it is and the way unaddressed it is, and then whilst fair exchange provided me with the concept of assisting a charity, I right away thought it should visit combat human trafficking each domestically and the world over,” he stated.
Robinson convinced 5 local bakeries to collaborate on recipes and production. “As soon as they heard approximately it and what an extraordinary cause it was, they’re like, I’m certainly doing it. For Warm Belly bakery, I created two cookies with them honestly, a hot fudge sundae cookie and a salted caramel apple pie cookie. And then from Fat Rice, I actually have a chocolate banana pear bread with garam masala and smoked salt,” he said. “So I actually have an extensive range of factors, and the whole thing tastes notable.”
