Fair Trade Berkeley Minutes

Fair Trade Berkeley Minutes Courtesy of Lauren Van Ham

In attendance at the meeting were:
Adam Wray, Swoonbeams, Organic and Fair Trade Confections
Libby Wenger, Fair Trade Berkeley
Katrina Soelter, UC Berkeley
Lauren Van Ham, Fair Trade Berkeley
Dagny Tucker, Fair Trade Berkeley
Miguel Zamora, TransFair USA
Jamie Guzzi, TransFair USA
Billy Linstead Goldsmith, Fair Trade Towns USA
Katie Barrow, TransFair USA

Thanks for attending the Fair Trade Berkeley meeting last Friday and if it was your first one, WELCOME to the Steering Committee.

Here’s a quick re-cap of what was covered, along with who’s doing what before our next meeting. We’ll meet again on Friday, September 11th, 4pm, once again at the Transfair office. It is likely the meetings will move to Berkeley after this.

Fair Trade Town Re-cap: The meeting was about an hour in length and we reviewed the 5 necessities to make a town a Fair Trade Town: 1) Steering Committee, 2) Retailers involvement (FT products on the shelves, being sold), 3) Community Support (schools, faith communities, govt. offices, etc.), 4) Press, 5) Legislation.

BAFTC: We also heard a quick review of how these ideas were approached earlier in the month at the Bay Area Fair Trade Coalition (BAFTC) meeting in SF.

Important and FUN Dates: We learned from the Transfair staff about a few events (Fair Trade Month is October) that will the BAFTC leverage its efforts. As event details are confirmed at Transfair, the Berkeley steering committee will solidify specifics.

Three events for your calendars:

Sept. 29th – Fair Trade Month Kick-off celebration (a “mixer”) at the Fox Den (cool venue) in Oakland , all BAFTC invited and a great place to invite prospective steering committee members and other interested folks.

Oct. 6th – Fair Trade wine tasting. Venue likely to be in Berkeley , possibly at The Hub on Cal campus. Slightly more high-brow. Again a “mixer.” Invite steering committee prospects. Berkeley steering committee members will want to present info on making Berkeley a FTT.

Halloween-ish – Fair Trade chocolate trick-or-treating event in Berkeley ( Solano Ave. vendors? Ghourmet Ghetto? MLK, Jr. Park?) Some event that is family-friendly. Plans and details to be determind.

Tasks before Next Meeting: From there, we got to work assigning aspects of the above to those present and not present (we didn’t want anyone to feel left out!). Please review this list. If you catch any errors or wish to be added/removed from any particular areas, please let me hear from you. And on that note, I’m happy to run point as the steering committee chair (sending out minutes and coordinating as helpful) so long as it makes sense. If a better “flow” evolves, that’s great, too.

Task 1 & 2 for Everyone: Familiarize and Invite!

1) Review the FTT Tool-kit, now available online. It will provide some tools you can use right now, as well as help us determine what tools we’d like to create for our efforts, unique to Berkeley. We’ll discuss this at our next meeting.

2) As you approach your tasks/territory (below), consider which contacts should be invited to join the Steering Committee (ask them to our meeting on the 11th!), and who would be right to approach for co-sponsorship or co-support in accomplishing the five steps to becoming a FTT.

Task 3 for Individuals: Tackle all 5 steps to becoming a FTT

1) Steering Committee – Lauren will run point for now. Please email me with contact info for new folks to be added to the Steering Committee communications. Also, if I can provide further details as to the meeting or something missing in this message, feel free to call. I’d like to hear from you.

2) Retailers involvement – Miguel will invite Ken Davids (the Coffee Review) to our next meeting, along with other coffee experts or Retail leads in the Berkeley area. Miguel will also research/provide more detailed information on the retail side of things in Berkeley (augmenting the Where to Buy list, determining businesses to approach about adding more FT products, looking into per capita numbers – Berkeley residents/FT products available, etc.) MO, feel free to chime in, here, I know you did some Berkeley-specific research this Summer. Libby, will you please look into contacts within the Better Business Bureau, Buy LLocal Berkeley and the Chamber of Commerce?

3) Community Support -

Schools – Johanna and Katrina are covering CAL . Katrina, Welcome! It sounds like you might have a bit more time this semester than Johanna to give to this effort. Both of you, however, have GREAT contacts, so I’ll leave it to the 2 of you to divide and conquer as you wish…and then inform the rest of us around the best ways to help you.

Faith communities – Lauren and David are covering faith communities.

Govt. offices – Lauren will pursue her lead to speak with the Dir. or Sustainability and assess who should be invited to the next meeting.

Others – Lauren will put Dagny in communication with the Berkeley Parents Network.

4.) Press – Katie is running point here.

Social Networking - Katie and Katrina will put a good deal of Press energy into leveraging Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. All of us will be asked to participate in this effort, so if you have an affinity for blogging, Tweeting, FB friend-making, or Yelping, Berekely FTT will offer you lots of opportunities to share your stories! To get started, be sure you join our Facebook page.

Copy – Dagny and Mo have both offered to write copy for Talking Points and Berkeley-specific brochures and the like. This will be an agenda item at our next meeting, so please review the Tool-kit and bring your ideas for what pieces need to be developed to address our Berkeley audience.

5) Legislation - Jamie is researching what happened with the Berkeley FTT efforts in 2002 (an attempt that was not resolved) and provide an update at our next meeting to determine next steps.

Thanks, everyone, this is going to be really fun. And isn’t it HIGH time Berkeley became known as a FTT? Here, here!!!