The prize basket holding our eco-goodies is one of our famed
Baba Tree Baskets from Ghana.
Fair-er than fair trade
Gregory MacCarthy, founder of the Baba Tree Basket Company, has always done a great job of keeping us informed about working and weaving conditions in Ghana, and the Baba Tree has always striven to be better than the so-called "fair trade" traders. Check out
this newsletter from the summer for some examples.
His enormous efforts were recently recognized in an
extensive report on fair trade practices published by Gayle Pescud and Godwin Yindana of the G-lish Foundation. To quote them:
"From the outset, when we conceived this research in 2012, one objective was to identify one or more producers who we could recommend as doing right by weavers, as alternatives for those buyers whose trader sources baskets from the central market.
Baba Tree are the only company we can recommend."
The full report is a highly recommended, informative read. You can find it
here.
Doing our part
We recently did Gregory and the basket weavers a big favour -- their cash flow was hurting and ours was temporarily not, so we pre-purchased next year's baskets way before we needed them.
Here they are being loaded into our 4-cylinder "truck", heaped up Ghana-style, to be taken to storage until we need them in 2015...
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