Equal Exchange's 2019 Summit

Thank You!

Thank you to all for participating in our 2019 summit. This was an incredibly powerful and inspiring summit and we thank each and everyone of you  for your role in making it so special. We were blown away by the care, participation and curiosity attendees brought forth over our two days together and are looking forward to capturing that energy for years to come. 

Intersted in learning more about the summit? Looking to get more deeply inolved this community?

Please mark your calendars for the following working group dates:

• Wednesday September 11th 7pm EST
• Wednesday October 9th 7pm EST
• Wednesday November 13th 7pm EST

2019 Summit

Join us at Wheaton College in Norton, MA on June 20th-22nd for our annual summit. Since 2017, Equal Exchange has hosted an annual gathering bringing together worker-owners, farmer partners and you! We believe you are an integral part of this movement and need your participation to succeed. Join our community for two days of workshops, celebration, and planning as we advance our vision of building a better food system, together. Accomdation will be provided for a travel day Thursday June 20 and Friday June 21.

"I got involved with EE back in my college days through the Boston Faith and Justice Network. And I stayed involved. I learned where my food is coming from and the different issues in all of that. I cook, I bake, I buy coffee, chocolate and bananas. Just learned that it’s all interconnected and it’s a pretty complicated world out there." - Kisuk K, Citizen-Consumer

RSVP is now closed. If you are interested in attending but missed our deadline contact Frankie at: fpondolph@equalexchange.coop.

2019 Summit Program

We are excited to announce our keynote speaker for this June, Santiago Paz López. Santiago is the export manager at Norandino Cooperative (formerly Cepicafe) located in the Piura region of Peru. What started out as a small group of coffee growers in the mountains of Peru has grown into a cooperative that produces far more than just coffee today.

 

“I believe the market is the most important. You must start from the reality of your producers. Most of them live in extreme poverty. The most important thing for them is to generate an income. They are busy surviving from day to day: what do we eat today, what do we eat tomorrow. The market can change matters”- Santiago Paz López

We are excited to share with you two exciting presenters at this years’ Citizen-Consumer Summit. You may have heard, this year we are asking our base to engage in two solidarity campaigns, Behind the Barcodes led by OXFAM and the Food and Agribusiness Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act led by the Organization of Competitive Markets. We admire both of these organizations and are excited to have leaders share their work this June that addresses issues in the food system.

 

Sarah Zoen is a Senior Advisor with Oxfam America’s Private Sector Department based in Boston. She leads on improving gender equality in corporate policies and practices, manages Oxfam’s community-based human rights impact assessment initiative (COBHRA), and manages the relationship with Whole Foods and Amazon for the Barcodes Campaign. In her 12 years at Oxfam, Sarah held roles promoting farmworker and immigrant rights as well as working with Oxfam’s country offices on private sector engagement

 

Oliver Gottfried serves as the Senior Campaign Strategist at Oxfam America. He oversees Oxfam’s campaigning on food issues, working to build a better food system, one that produces enough for a growing population and empowers poor people to earn a living and feed their families. He previously led Oxfam’s campaign to improve working conditions and wages for America’s 250,000 poultry processing workers. Prior to coming to Oxfam America, he spent 14 years leading campaigning and advocacy work for political campaigns and labor unions across the United States. He received his undergraduate degree from Haverford College.

Joe Maxwell is a fourth generation hog farmer from Missouri. He has served his state as a state representative, state senator, and Lt. Governor. Joe began his political career as a campaign staffer for several legislative and statewide races. As a legislator, he passed many bills that supported value-added agriculture projects and programs for family farmers and their traditional animal husbandry practices while working against large-scale, multi-national industrialized farms. In 2016, he successfully defeated the so-called “Right to Farm” in Oklahoma, an effort by multi-national corporations to gain fundamental constitutional rights so they could exhibit their power over family farmers and destroy the rural way of life.

Today, as the Executive Director of the Organization for Competitive Markets, Maxwell works to fight to keep markets open for family farmers and independent ranchers. His experience has set him on a course to break the lock industrial agriculture has on the various agriculture markets where 4 transnational corporations control as much as 82% of the market. He understands this heavy market concentration denies workers, farmers and ranchers their opportunity to share in the America's prosperity they help build and that an inclusive economy must be restored if America is to gain its full potential.

Please RSVP is now closed.