Todd Holmes, Regional Security and Safety Officer for CRS in the Middle East, has lived in Cairo for several years. Here, he writes about how the global economic crisis is affecting an Egyptian friend who has already been struggling.

CRS security officer Todd Holmes stands near the Avenue of the Sphinx in Luxor, Egypt. Photo by CRS staff

I met Hamed, a 30 year old single man, when I first moved to Egypt. He was hotel staff where CRS put me up until I found more permanent housing. Hamed was warm, welcoming, and gracious. Since the hotel was near the CRS office, I would run into him from time to time. We hung out several times and I learned more of his personal story. His father had died when he was a teenager leaving his mother to struggle to raise him.

He grew up into a hard working man and when it came his turn, entered military service that he completed in three years. Fresh out of the military he needed to support his widowed mother and found work as a pool hand in the hotel’s recreation area.
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Ben Hess is a CRS international development fellow living in Guatemala and working with savings-led microfinance programs.

CRS recently commissioned a survey of the communities in San Marcos where the women’s savings groups are operating. The survey was carried out by teenage girls who have received scholarships from CRS that enable them to attend school and purchase materials. Although we have not tabulated the complete results, I wanted to share some of the comments from the participants in the savings groups. The response from them was overwhelmingly positive—out of more than 50 participants, only a couple felt that the experience had not brought any benefits. (Note: We also interviewed community members who are not currently participating in the groups to measure whether they are aware of the groups and interested in joining one.)
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Fair Trade is a easy way to give gifts to loved ones and help working poor families around the world. If you’re looking for gifts you won’t find on department store shelves, check out the CRS Fair Trade web site and blog.

You can promote justice for small-scale farmers and artisans overseas when you:

- Educate yourself and people in your parish, school, office and community to understand how their decision to buy Fair Trade items can help.

- Join the CRS Fair Trade network. You will receive your quarterly copy of The CRS Fair Trader, an electronic newsletter that provides updates on new program developments and new opportunities to promote trade justice.

- Serve and Sell Fair Trade coffee, chocolate and crafts after Mass and at special events in your parish, school, office, community and home. It is a great way to begin a conversation with your fellow parishioners, classmates, colleagues and neighbors about Fair Trade and the hope it offers to small-scale producers overseas.

- Buy Fair Trade for your home, parish, school or office.

- Donate to the CRS Fair Trade Fund.

- Advocate for fairer terms of trade.

Fair Trade is a easy way to give gifts to loved ones and help working poor families around the world. If you’re looking for gifts you won’t find on department store shelves, check out the CRS Fair Trade web site and blog.

When you buy Fair Trade, you:

- Celebrate the human dignity of the farmers who grew it;
- Demonstrate a special concern for the poor;
- Act in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in need overseas;
- Ensure that farmers earn a just wage;
- Contribute to a more just distribution of wealth;
- Practice responsible stewardship of Creation; and
- Promote the principle of subsidiarity.

But buying Fair Trade is not entirely selfless. After all, you get great products that are unique and received a lot of care in their production.

Fair Trade is a easy way to give gifts to loved ones and help working poor families around the world. If you’re looking for gifts you won’t find on department store shelves, check out the CRS Fair Trade web site and blog.

As Americans, we collectively spend $19 billion a year to feed our coffee habit. (That is, incidentally, nearly twice the Gross Domestic Product of Nicaragua.)

If there are 250-300 million people in the United States and about 60 million Catholics, then we Catholics are just over one-fifth of the national population. And if the national coffee expenditure is about $20 billion, and if Catholics drink about as much coffee as everyone else, then Catholics in the United States spend about $5 billion each year on coffee.

Clearly, this is not a scientific figure. But it is probably safe to say that each year Catholics in the United States spend billions on coffee. And that’s just coffee—the chocolate industry brings in $14 billion a year in the US alone meaning Catholics spend about $3 billion on chocolate.

Ben Hess is a CRS international development fellow living in Guatemala and working with savings-led microfinance programs.

The 2007/2008 Human Development Report’s statistics on Guatemala are pretty depressing. Approximately 54 percent of Guatemalan children under age five are under their height for age (a sign of malnourishment), almost one in three individuals over age 15 cannot read or write, 32 percent of Guatemalans survive on less than $2 per day, and 56 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line. CRS addresses these issues through a variety of projects, including nutritional and health monitoring of mothers and young children, technical assistance to small farmers, and educational scholarships for poor students.

Nevertheless, CRS has observed that even when these projects are successful and families improve their economic situations, many Guatemalans do not access formal financial institutions—including banks and microfinance agencies—due to unfamiliarity with the services they offer, fears of being manipulated, or high barriers to entry.
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Fair Trade is a easy way to give gifts to loved ones and help working poor families around the world. If you’re looking for gifts you won’t find on department store shelves, check out the CRS Fair Trade web site and blog.

The Fair Trade Federation estimates that fair trade accounts for just .01 percent of the $3.6 trillion in goods exchanged around the world.

The GLOBAL Fair Trade marketplace doubled from 2005 to 2006 to $2.6 billion dollars.

Here in the States Fair Trade Certified product imports into the U.S. have grown at an average annual rate of 76 percent over the last five years (source: TransFair USA).

Fair Trade is a easy way to give gifts to loved ones and help working poor families around the world. If you’re looking for gifts you won’t find on department store shelves, check out the CRS Fair Trade web site and blog. Below, a look at the beginnings of an overseas CRS Fair Trade coffee project.

In 2002, the international price of coffee had dropped to an all time low. Nicaragua, where an estimated one-third of the country’s 5.1 million residents depend in some measure on coffee revenues, has been hit particularly hard by the coffee crisis.

Nicaraguan coffee farmers took to the streets in protest, the low prices for coffee made it impossible for farmers to recoup their production costs. The fragile income that supported their families had collapsed. With their families going hungry, many farmers abandoned their land in search of work in the cities.

CRS/Nicaragua recognized the need for longer-term assistance to help small-scale coffee farmers survive in an unusually competitive international market. This led to a longer-term commitment to provide technical assistance to struggling coffee farmers. CRS and our partner, Caritas Matagalpa, offered to help coffee farmers form a cooperative through which they could work to improve the quality of their coffee, receive access to credit and gain access to the fair trade market.

Fair Trade is a easy way to give gifts to loved ones and help working poor families around the world. If you’re looking for gifts you won’t find on department store shelves, check out the CRS Fair Trade web site and blog. Below, more on our Fair Trade mission.

CRS works through the Fair Trade Program to build right relationships with the people overseas who create the things we enjoy here in the United States.

The CRS Fair Trade program offers four ways to be involved with Fair Trade, the Coffee Project, Chocolate Project, Work of Human Hands, and the Fair Trade fund.

Our overarching goal is to educate Catholics and others about what Fair Trade is and help them spread the word about how to get involved.

The CRS program offeres Fair Trade trainings that cover details about Fair Trade, the projects, and how to become involved. Many of these trainings involve a visit to one of our partners in the United States to meet folks who are 100% dedicated to Fair Trade.

Fair Trade is a easy way to give gifts to loved ones and help working poor families around the world. If you’re looking for gifts you won’t find on department store shelves, check out the CRS Fair Trade web site and blog. Below, a bit of history on CRS involvement with Fair Trade.

Catholic Relief Services has worked to alleviate suffering and promote genuine human development for poor and marginalized people overseas for more than 60 years. We also work to create opportunities for Catholics and others in the United States to live their faith more fully by living it in solidarity with the people we serve around the world. The CRS Fair Trade Program creates opportunities for Catholics in the United States to live their faith in solidarity with our brothers and sisters around the world, and to honor core principles of Catholic Social Teaching through the choices we make every day as consumers.

The CRS Fair Trade Program strives to build right relationships between our two constituencies—poor and marginalized people overseas and Catholics here in the United States—through collaboration with mission-oriented Fair Trade companies.