If you love to Travel – and if you’re on this site, chances are you do, you should know about – and support, Fair Trade.  What’s Fair Trade?  Fair Trade goods are produced by people who are paid fair prices and wages, work in safe conditions, protect the environment, and receive community development funds to empower and uplift their communities.  In other words – why just eat a banana when you can eat a banana that may have helped an Ecuadorian Dad make a decent living, and an Ecuadorian child get a decent education?

Basically – buying Fair Trade helps ensure that the ways of life you so admire, or aspire to see, or hope to preserve in poorer countries around the world will be supported. Drink a cup of Fair Trade coffee, and you might support a women’s health clinic in Rwanda.  Bake your kids’ birthday cake with fair trade sugar, and you could help a farming coop in the Philippines go organic.

Recently. Fair Trade USA sent me a basket of Fair Trade breakfast items for their “Change your Breakfast, Change the World” campaign, and what struck me about the products was how  - well – “normal” they were.  Fair  Trade doesn’t mean poorly packaged, or not as good as.  Fair Trade products like the Earl Grey serendipi Tea I got, for example, are products I buy anyway.  Luna Bars are Fair Trade.  Tell me you haven’t eaten a Luna Bar.

Bottom Line: buy Fair Trade to celebrate and support the people in the countries you love – or would love – to visit.  So that people there will have the life they deserve.

Want to find out more?  Go to www.fairtradeusea.org to learn, to browse products, get discounts and recipes, or donate. Follow @FairTradeUSA on Twitter. Like it on Facebook.  Little things that can mean so much.

Millions of hard-working people around the world live on less than a dollar a day.  And you can help them especially this Saturday, May 14th by eating a Fair Trade breakfast as part of World Fair Trade day. Helping poor workers around the world is as easy as pouring yourself a cup of Fair Trade coffee, stirring in some Fair Trade sugar, and indulging in a little fair trade high-grade chocolate.  So look for the Fair Trade Certified logo on products where you shop.  And you might just shop yourself into a good deed.