Choose Fairtrade - Choose the world you want

Every trip to the grocery store is an opportunity to choose the world you want. We want a world where farmers get paid a fair price for their goods, women and communities thrive and the environment is prioritized. A simple everyday action like purchasing a fair trade certified product can be a powerful way to prioritize the nearly 2 million farmers and workers participating in fair trade.

Fairtrade America, the U.S. chapter of Fairtrade International, the world’s most recognized label for social justice and sustainability, commissions murals across the U.S. to celebrate the people who produce the food we count on everyday, like tea, and to generate awareness that we all have an incredible opportunity to create the world we want through everyday choices. One of these murals lives at Outpost in Bay View. 

Created by acclaimed local artist Nova Czarnecki, the Bay View store mural features Fairtrade certified tea farmer Ranjana Maurya and themed around a key area of impact for Fairtrade:promoting gender equality.

www.fairtradeamerica.org/choose-the-world-you-want/milwaukee/

Meet farmer Ranjana Maurya

Organic India USA

Ranjana Maurya, a member farmer of Organic India Farmer Producer Company Limited, growing Holy Basil (Tulsi) used to make Organic India teas sold here at Outpost. Ranjana is part of a community that converted their agricultural practices to organic in order to increase profits and better take care of their land. Ranjana took over her family’s farming practices after her husband was injured. She is grateful for the benefits her community has experienced being part of Fairtrade, including the investment of her community’s Fairtrade Premium. The Premium has been used on projects that have helped improve yields as well as the health of the community; for instance, the installation of tube wells that resolved water irrigation issues and now also provide safe drinking water to the community.

Watch: "Engendering Sustainable Change at Organic India Farmer Producer Co." which features Ranjana and other farmers!

Meet artist Nova Czarnecki

http://novaczarnecki.com/index.html

Nova Czarnecki is an artist living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She believes in the Fairtrade mission and is passionate about human rights. She has been inspired by Ranjana’s story and hopes the mural will stand as an inspiration for all who see her. Ranjana has taken on the roles of wife, mother and leader and this mural of her helps demonstrate just how powerful women can be. Nova aims to portray the beauty and complexity of what it means to live and carry a life in her work. Her subjects are made up of, surrounded by and woven into elements of nature to convey our connectedness to the whole while highlighting the preciousness of those elements and the soul. 

Nova has been an Outpost Natural Foods shopper for years and it is even where her son got his first job, making this project close to home and heart.

Area of Impact: Promoting Gender Equality

A large proportion of the world’s food is produced by women, yet gender inequality remains prevalent in farming communities worldwide. There is a significant “gender gap” in agriculture where women farmers have less access to resources like land, education, credit, training, and supplies.

To alter this reality, Fairtrade’s gender strategy supports farming organizations in tackling the unequal power relationships that hold women back in the workplace and society. Fairtrade focuses on increasing women and girls’ human, social, financial and physical capital to rebalance power structures between people of dierent genders. Today, 25% of Fairtrade’s producers are women.

Setting and monitoring standards is not enough to create gender equality. Fairtrade actively and intentionally works with women and men to fix power imbalances. From prohibiting gender-based discrimination to promoting Premium projects centered on women to starting women's schools of leadership — we know that investing in women creates a more just and fair world.

View the entire project!