Locally-made, fair trade products in Cebu City!

Heads up, Cebuanos! Taga Cebu City ba ka? Adto na mo sa People’s Fair Trade Shop sa Osmeña Avenue!

This is a piece of good news that I found through a colleague’s Facebook—Cebu City has a store devoted to selling exclusively fair trade products.

What are fair trade products? To be honest, there is no single universally-accepted definition of fair trade but according to the Southern Partners and Fair Trade Corporation (SPFTC), which runs the store, a fair trade product is one that meets the following criteria:

• it is made by workers who receive fair wages, in safe, human working conditions
• it is made from raw materials bought at fair prices, using a process which cares for the environment,
• by a company, cooperative, or people’s organization that operates on the pricinciples transparency and accountability, capacity building, and gender equity, and the creation of opportunities for marginalized members of society.

I’m very jealous of Cebuanos now—because the principles of this fair trade store are basically the principles that drove me to start this blog in the first place.

Have you been to the store yet? What’s it like? What kind of products do they sell? I’d love to hear from Cebuanos what they think of the store.

You can read the news item here.