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Schools

Sousa Offers Fair Trade Holiday Gifts For Sale

School Green Committee sells handmade crafts and organic delicacies from across the globe.

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and for the first time  Green Committee is running a fund-raising sale for shoppers in search of fair trade crafts and organic delicacies. Sousa's Home School Association (HSA) will receive 40 percent of the total sales proceeds.

Sale items include treats such as organic coffees, teas, chocolates and nuts as well as an assortment of crafts by artisans from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

The organic, handmade products come from the Equal Exchange Fair Trade Catalog and carry a fair trade designation, meaning workers are paid decent wages and enjoy safe working conditions. The designation also stipulates that no child labor be used.  

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"It's a win-win-win," said Sousa parent Marisa Fasciano, who purchased half a dozen items from the catalog that went home in every child's backpack.

"It helps the school, it helps me since I'm always in search of hostess gifts and I like to support fair work and the environment to help crafts people rather than just buy the mass produced," Fasciano added.

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The crafts for sale are made with an eye towards celebrating sustainability. One such item is a recycled silk scarf, made from repurposing the discarded silk scraps from other projects. Another is an olive and brick-red hand-printed tablecloth from India, pigmented with vegetable dyes. The catalog's recycled paper hot mats are perhaps the most ingenious product: drink trivets of newspapers woven into geometric patterns.

Items range in price from $7 for a bag of organic cranberries to $75 for the Complete Fair Trader Gift Box, with a sampling of teas, coffees, nuts and chocolates. All items can be wrapped in "tree-free" gift wrap. As part of the sale, the Green Committee is also selling items that "green" the school lunchbox including reusable packaging such as Lunchbots and Klean Kanteen water bottles.

The Green Committee hopes that sale of Fair Trade and earth-friendly products will help educate the school community.

"It's conscious shopping," said committee co-chair Julianne Littman. "It's where does this product come from? Think before you buy. Fair trade products help people on the other side of the globe so much. It allows them to live like human beings." 

School Principal Dr. David Meoli said while he couldn't take any credit because it was an HSA initiative, he supported the sale as the themes tied into the school curriculum.

"Every year we pick a theme and this year it's Sousa Goes Global," Meoli said. "This initiative is global. It addresses sustainability – all the issues that are necessary to educate kids today about." 

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