Fair Trade Fashion Webinar
Nov 1st – 14th
3 Webinar Events – 2 Social Media Challenges – 8 Prizes and Giveaways
Conversations on Fair Trade Fashion, November 5, 6 pm PST
Listen from a panel of Fair Trade experts. Including Blythe Hill from Dressember, Alexandra Badie from Purpose Jewelry, Cindy Islas from the Salvation Army, and Brittany Skiles from Fair Trade LA. Two attendees will be chosen to win a “Fair Trade In A Box” prize!
Zoom Meeting ID: 929 2872 0171
Passcode: 561550
Affordable Fair Trade Shopping for Young Adults, November 10, 6 pm PST
Hear from young adults who are actively living the fair trade lifestyle. Learn some tips and tricks about how to incorporate fair trade into your life as a young adult on a budget. Two attendees will be chosen to win a “Fair Trade In A Box” prize!
Zoom Meeting ID: 990 81289575
Passcode: 537304
Exploring Local Fair Trade, November 13, 1 pm PST
This webinar will involve local vendors and you! Tune in to the meeting at your favorite fair trade store. Two attendees will be chosen to win a “Fair Trade In A Box” prize!
Zoom Meeting ID: 922 3303 5165
Passcode: 431188
For updates and more information follow @_Live2Free_ on Instagram!
Transcript
Dave [00:00:02] Hi, it’s Dave Stachowiak, co-host of the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, with a very special announcement. You have heard before the Live2Free organization featured here on the show, and you’ve also heard about some of the fair trade fashion shows that Live2Free has hosted over the years. Well, this year has a bit different. Right. We have COVID in our midst. And so we’re doing some new things than we’ve done before. And we wanted to let you know about it because there’s an opportunity to get involved online and connect with some of the great work that Live2Free is doing. I am so glad to be able to welcome back a voice you have heard many times on the show. Ruthi Hanchett. She is the Live2Free coach here at Vanguard University of Southern California and also on the board here of the Global Center for Women of Justice. Ruthi, so glad to see you again.
Ruthi [00:00:57] Thanks. It’s good to be back, Dave.
Dave [00:00:59] Glad to have you back. And you were here today with a very special announcement for a way for all of us to get involved. So there’s actually an opportunity this year because everything’s virtual.
Ruthi [00:01:09] Yeah, it’s, you know, a blessing in disguise, if we can call it that, because, well, we have had to make some major changes because of the global pandemic. It does open up some opportunities in that we have this opportunity to expand our fashion show to include many people that may not physically have otherwise been able to come. So, as you mentioned, we have been able to host a fair trade fashion show for the last five years or this will be our fifth year. And it’s a great opportunity for our students to show us what they’re learning and how they’re growing and understanding about not only slave trafficking and slave labor, but really the impact we can have as consumers when we choose to buy more ethically sourced products. So normally we have a really fun celebration of fair trade, fashion, and ethically sourced products with all kinds of students walking the runway. Community members that come and participate. But this year we’ve had to shift. And because of that, we’re putting it all online. We’re going to have a virtual fair trade celebration. And that means that anyone can participate by joining us on Zoom webinars and also participating in some really fun fashion challenges that we’ve planned for these two weeks of November.
Dave [00:02:26] And we have an important guest with us today, one of the leaders involved with this, the president of Live2Free.
Ruthi [00:02:33] Yeah, I’m so excited. I brought along with me the student president, Alexandrea Hurst, Alie is an amazing leader of her peers. And she and her team have come up with some really innovative ways to do this fashion show and celebrate fair trade options in a virtual world. So I’m going to introduce Alie and let her explain what the students are planning this year.
Alie [00:02:55] Thank you so much, Ruthie. So I’m so thrilled to announce that our student team this year has created a two-week celebration of fair trade fashion. We’re going to have two social media challenges that will each run for one week and have three prize winners at the end. So for a total of six prize winners and in addition to that, we’ll be hosting three webinars that you can join and view from all over the world. So we’ll have a conversation on Fair Trade Fashion Webinar with different panelists and guest speakers that work in the fair trade community. We’ll also have affordable, fair trade shopping for young adults, which will be student-led, student put together, meant to help young adults know how they can shop fair trade without breaking the bank. And then we’ll have for our finale webinar exploring local fair trade, where we’ll be incorporating vendor participation and sending students physically to storefronts to tune into one webinar. And you can see what fair trade looks like in Orange County.
Dave [00:04:08] Alie, fabulous. It’s really such an exciting lineup of activities and events for those who would like to participate. What’s the best way to connect and learn about all the different dates and links to get involved?
Alie [00:04:23] I would recommend, if you want to get involved, to follow the Live2Free, Instagram and Facebook and the Global Center for Women and Justice, Instagram and Facebook, where we will be posting updates and links and dates and times. So if you would like to follow Live2Free’s Instagram, that would be @_Live2Free_. And you can also just look up our name, Live2Free, and we’ll be right there. GCWJ, if you’d like to follow them on Instagram or Facebook, you can look for VUGCWJ on both Instagram and Facebook. And if you follow us there, that’s the best way for you to stay up to date on what we’re doing, on the details of each challenge, and the links and details of all of our webinars. So that is what I would recommend.
Dave [00:05:17] Fabulous. And for those who haven’t seen Live2Free written out before, it’s live, the number two, free, all basically smushed together, right?
Alie [00:05:26] Yes, it is.
Dave [00:05:28] Perfect. OK, so if you are interested in diving in on these events upcoming here during the month of November 2020, I hope that you will take a few minutes to dive in Live2Free, l i v e the number two f r e e is the best place to go on both Facebook and Instagram for following them. Also, the Global Center for Women and Justice, as many of you follow already either on Instagram or Facebook, you can, of course, just search for the Global Center for Women and Justice or the user I.D.. VUGCWJ. That is the very best way to get connected. Ruthi Ali, anything else that folks should know if they’d like to get involved?
Alie [00:06:10] I would just encourage you to use this as an opportunity to get creative and really get hands-on with the issue. We’ll have a thrifted an ethical challenge on social media, which would be a great chance for you to recycle old clothes, to go out into the community, and find things you maybe weren’t looking for before. So I just want to encourage anyone listening to really anywhere around the world get hands-on with this and get involved, because this is a great opportunity to learn about the issues.
Ruthi [00:06:43] I am so proud of the students and the way that they’ve taken really a huge challenge and a difficult situation and made something super positive out of it. And what I love is that when we purchase fair trade or when we support these small vote talks that are selling fair trade items, we are also building the economy and supporting individual artisans around the globe. And right now, we know Covid-19, has so many people so hard and this is a way to support people and pay them for their labor. So it’s a great way to celebrate and make a difference to affect fighting human trafficking. And learn and have fun with it.
Dave [00:07:20] Ruthie and Ali, thank you so much for your leadership on this, not only at the faculty level, at the student level, and in the community, it’s really exciting to see. And I hope that you’ll all take our invitation to jump online on social media, connect with Live2Free. Also with the Global Center for Women and Justice, if you haven’t already. We will have all the links, as we always do for every episode on our main site at Endinghumantrafficking.org. So if you would like to get involved, you can always go there. We’ll have all the links posted for you if you have any questions that have come up from our announcement today. Feel free to drop us an e-mail with any questions as well. Feedback at Endinghumantrafficking.org is where to go. And we’ll be back with our normal every other Monday episode here. Coming up soon. So we look forward to seeing you online. In the meantime, thanks again, Ruthie. Thanks again, Ali. And all of Live2Free. And we look forward to seeing you all online. Take care and have a great week.
