Getting Fair Trade products at Trent

Fair Trade Trent has been an active working group of OPIRG-Peterborough since 2003.The group had two components when it first formed. The first component of Fair Trade Trent was to raise awareness about and promote Fair Trade products throughout the Peterborough and Trent community.The second component of the group was to lobby the Trent administration and ARAMARK to work towards implementing the sale of Fair Trade on campus and the adoption of a purchasing policy for Fair Trade certified products at the university.

The student led struggle to make Fair Trade products available in Trent's cafeterias, began in the fall of 2003, when a group of Trent students working with the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) Peterborough, organized to demand the availability of Fair Trade coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar and other items in the Trent cafeterias.

In 2004 and 2005 the group, OPIRG's Fair Trade Trent working group carried out petition campaigns demanding a switch to Fair Trade Certified products in the cafeterias at Trent. In addition to lobbying the Trent administration and the foodservice provider, ARAMARK, the group also focused efforts on education and awareness-raising to ensure that the student body understood Fair Trade and the challenges facing small farmers.

During the 2006-2007 school year, the Fair Trade Trent working group formed a committee with Trent administrators and ARAMARK to work towards sourcing Fair Trade products for the cafeterias and with the goal of eventually adopting a Fair Trade Certified products purchasing policy for Trent University.

Fair Trade Trent received news in September 2007, that they had been successful in their 4 year campaign and that Fair Trade Certified would now have a notable presence in the cafeterias at Trent. As of the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, the majority of coffee served in Trent's cafeterias is Fair Trade and Fair Trade teas, hot chocolate and chocolate bars are available as well. Even more importantly, a Fair Trade Certified Products Purchasing Policy is also in the final stages of development and will likely become official university policy later this year.

OPIRG sponsored a victory celebration for Fair Trade Trent on September 18th, 2007.

A Changing Focus: From a focus on Fair Trade to a broader focus on Ethical Purchasing within Post-Secondary Institutions

1. Research into Ethical Food Sourcing:

In the fall of 2007, OPIRG hosted a TCCBE research project where two Trent students, Steve Disher and Hayley Goodchild wrote OPIRG Ethical Food Sourcing Project – A Research Framework. Some of the questions they addressed in their project were:

• What is fair trade? What is ethical sourcing? What are procurement policies?

• Where is the movement to change university procurement policies coming from?  Who is initiating them, who are involved?

• (Where) have there been successes in implementing or changing policy? How did this occur?

• Are most of these movements being effective? Why or why not?

• Where are these struggles happening across the country?

• What tools do these movements have to realize their goals?

• What groundwork that can be taken up by other students interested in bringing the project to fruition?

2. The Ethical Purchasing Policies Activist School (Feb 1rst to 3rd):

In Feb, 2008, OPIRG hosted a TCCBE project with Trent Student Pat Clark to organize an Ethical Purchasing Policies Activist School with the Canadian Student Fair Trade Network.

Purpose of the Activist School: To bring together students from across Canada working to shift their schools toward ethical purchasing policies and practices. Students will be able to share experiences and strategize on how to work together more effectively in the future across multiple issues ranging from ethical purchasing to sustainability that share in the common element of advocacy directed to school administrations to shift operating practices. Students working on these issues through various student-led groups and NGOs are invited to join us for a weekend of network and movement building and activist training.

Participants: The Activist School will be sponsored locally by Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG)-Peterborough, with participants coming from PIRG locals across Ontario, United Students Against Sweatshops Canada, Engineers Without Borders, World University Services Canada, Équiterre, Oxfam Canada and Oxfam Québec locals, amongst other allied groups. Trent students and Peterborough residents welcome!

Activist School and Student Federations (i.e. CFS, FEUQ, FECQ)
One central theme and outcome for the weekend will be a discussion about how the Student Federations in Canada can more actively promote and support ethical purchasing campaigns. One task is to get the student federations to take more official policy positions on ethical purchasing. Another proposal is to get the student federations to take up a standing campaign on ethical purchasing. One tool for such a campaign would be the development of an ethical purchasing report card that could be used by students at different universities and colleges to rate their school’s commitment to ethical purchasing. Members of the student federations’ executives and locals are invited to attend and partake in these discussions.