Making a Difference in Today’s World

What is Fair Trade?

So often farmers, craftsmen, and artisans in the 3rd world struggle to make ends meet simply because they don’t get a fair wage fro their work. Huge multinational companies purchase their products for pennies, sell them for dollars, and none of it gets back to the people who it most. Fair Trade is an organized social movement and market based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries and promote sustainability. The movement advocates for fair wages for 3rd world producers as well as higher social and environmental standards. When you purchase a product with the fair trade certified logo you are guaranteed a number of things:

• The producer received a fair wage in respect to the standard of living in his/her country
• Both the producer & the distributor met the strict criteria of fair trade certification as put forward by FLO International.

MBC exclusively serves Level Ground Trading coffee. Level Ground Trading is fair trade certified and guarantees a fair price per pound to farmers, including a guaranteed minimum when market prices are low.

Learn more about Fair Trade at www.transfair.ca
Learn more about Fair Trade certification at www.flo-cert.net

Fair Trade products are also available locally at a wide variety of stores including:

• Starbucks (Coffees & Teas)
• Costco (Coffee)
• McQuarries Tea & Coffee Merchants
• The Better Good Store (Clothing, footwear, etc.)
• Ten Thousand Villages (Coffees, teas, chocolate, art, furniture, etc.)

When visiting any of the above mentioned stores, remember to look for the fair trade certification logo on the products.

What is microfinancing?

Microfinancing is the supply of loans, savings, and other basic financial services to the poor.

What are they for? Often what keeps poor people poor is the availability of capital; they don’t have enough cash to invest into an endeavor to get it off the ground. However, with a small micro-loan the cycle of poverty can be broken. When a family can get a loan big enough to start up a viable enterprise not only can they pay the money back, they can now become a contributing member of their society and stimulate their local economy.

One of the best microfinance organizations is Kiva

You can also look at World Vision

What is Turn on the Tap?

For 884 million people, having no access to a safe water supply is a daily reality. Every year 1.4 million children die from diarrhoeal diseases transmitted through contaminated water and poor hygiene practices.

Samaritan’s Purse Canada is attacking this travesty by installing BioSand Water Filters in villages throughout the developing world. These simple water filters effectively remove up to 99% of all water borne pathogens, along with particulate matter. The result is water that is safe to drink, cook & clean with.

At a cost of only $100 you can supply a BioSand Water Filter for a village in need, providing a village with the filter, vital health and hygiene education and filter maintenance.

For more information, go to Samaritan’s Purse’s website.