If we are all being honest, I think we can admit that the majority of us have heard of fair trade, have a vague notion of fair trade, but honestly have no idea what fair trade is actually all about. The University of Ottawa was inaugurated as Canada's 7th FairTrade Campus in 2014, thanks largely to the many student volunteers and Food Service employees who pushed to get this designation. I won't go into what it means to be a Fairtrade campus, you can look up all the criteria online . But I will share with you some interesting insight that I gained during Fair Trade Campus Week (FTCW). I was surprised to find out just how important fair trade is to the environmental movement. So you may have already noticed that I keep jumping around the spelling of Fair Trade. This is not a mistake, seriously, it isn't. Fair trade is not the same as Fairtrade. Fair trade is a concept about better prices, decent working conditions and fair terms of trade for farmers and ...

The day is quickly arriving and it will be a race to the finish. The University of Ottawa is only weeks away from becoming a Fair Trade Certified Campus . That's right, thanks to the hard work of the students at the uOttawa Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), and the commitment made by Food Services and Charwells, the University of Ottawa will meet the criteria for becoming a Fair Trade Campus hopefully before the holiday season. I really wanted to take a moment to acknowledge this monumental task. First, almost all the heavy lifting was done by one student, Ryan Ward-Davies. He took on the project as a member of the EWB and has worked tirelessly to get the campus certified. Second, I want to acknowledge the work done by Food Services and Chartwells. Getting the campus to become Fair Trade Certified is not as easy as flicking a switch. There were a lot of tough decisions to be taken and sacrifices to be made. So here is the breakdown of what a campus needs to...