“It’s a way to appreciate everything they do,” said Meyer, a member of MSU Students for Fair Trade.

MSU Students for Fair Trade held its fifth annual Fair Trade Bash from 6:30-9 p.m. Tuesday in the International Center. The event featured booths from student and professional vendors selling everything from chocolate to jewelry.

“It really connects producers in developing countries to consumers in developed countries,” said Lauren Hayes, president of the group.

The bash also featured a presentation about the green economy by Kevin Danaher, co-founder of Global Exchange — an international human rights organization dedicated to promoting environmental, political and social justice.

Hayes said MSU Students for Fair Trade is working on a campaign to have MSU earn a designation as a fair trade university.

“Right now, we’re partially there because Sparty’s is 100 percent fair trade,” Hayes said.

To qualify, MSU also would have to provide at least one more fair trade product in the cafeterias — which could be anything from bananas to tea — and establish a policy saying the university is committed to fair trade products, fair trade education and buying more fair trade products as they become available, Hayes said.

Carroll Tobias — an assistant manager at Kirabo, 225 E. Grand River Ave. — said the store sells solely fair trade products from more than 37 countries, including jewelry, clothing and chocolate.

“It’s an effort to get artisans fair compensation for their work and give an outlet for them to keep creating goods,” she said.

Gail Catron, managing partner of the store, said one of the most unique products the store sells is green and white handmade paper necklaces and earrings made from elephant dung from Sri Lanka. The artists are using the MSU-themed jewelry in East Lansing as a test market and will make them for all Big Ten universities if they prove successful, she said.

“It’s the ultimate recycling,” Catron said.

Often, fair trade artisans don’t have the money for raw materials and have to rely on raw materials that they can recycle and turn into a product, she said.

The store has been in business for nearly four years — just recently moving to the Grand River Avenue location — and Catron said even as the economy has been declining in recent years, the interest in fair trade has been growing.

“It’s a way for (customers) to spend their dollars and have a voice,” she said.

Jerry Muskat-Martin, an MSU business administration graduate student, said it can be difficult to find fair trade products and the bash was a way to help find locations where they are available.
“I don’t want people taken advantage of,” he said.