Falling into Fair Trade: 
Spruce up Your Holidays with Gifts Worth Giving / Make the Holidays more Meaningful with Gifts Worth Giving – 2012-10-29

Fair Trade

By Katie Sobiech

As the fall season rolls in and you find yourself craving a warm cup of coffee and chocolate, or wanting to find gifts for your loved ones, make sure to stop by Market Path. Celebrating their 5th year this November, Market Path, a local fair trade market, was started by First Grace United Church to help support justice works across the world.

“They started the store as a social justice project to help alleviate poverty world-wide, which is what fair trade works to do,” Day Evans, Manager of Market Path, said.

Most of their products come from South and Central America and Asian and African countries, but they also have items from Colorado, and even Akron, where many refugees have been settling.

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TEDx Akron: 
Spreading Out-of-the-Box Ideas, 
Celebrates 2nd Year Locally – 2012-10-24

By Katie Sobiech

TEDxAkron

If you haven’t already caught on to this phenomenon, allow us to introduce you to TED. TED is a fascinating non-profit, full of bright ideas that started as a 4-day conference in California 25 years ago. Only recently has it really begun to spread like wildfire – creating TEDx’s, or independent conferences, to share even more ideas locally. TED invites some of the world’s greatest “thinkers and doers” – giving them a platform to share their world changing ideas.

At the click of a mouse, viewers are granted “Access to the world’s most inspiring voices”. More than 900 TEDTalks are now available, for free, on their website (www.ted.com). TED enlightens the world through TED.com, their annual conferences and local TEDx events.

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Stop the Trafficking Conference:
Raising up Voices to Take a Stand for the Voiceless
 Part Three – 2012-11-07

Human Trafficking

By Katie Sobiech

As we wrap up this series of stories on Human Trafficking and the Stop the Trafficking conference held at the Chapel last month, it’s important not only to reflect on the reality of this injustice, but to find solutions.

The fight against human trafficking is not only about stopping those in the wrong, but empowering young girls and women so that they don’t return to these men – seeing prostitution as their only option.

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