WorldFest 2008
It's that time of year again, WorldFest starts tomorrow.
WorldFest begins Friday in OKC
Journal Record
October 2, 2008
OKLAHOMA CITY – Kamala Gamble is donating her catering business food and sales proceeds to WorldFest this weekend because she shares a common guiding principle with event organizer World Neighbors.
“What World Neighbors supports is sustainable development in other countries. And local food is sustainable here,” Gamble said. “So I’m a big supporter of their efforts.”
The fifth annual WorldFest ends Sunday at the Coca-Cola Bricktown Events Center east of downtown Oklahoma City. Last year the event attracted more than 2,500 people. Visitors will have the opportunity to support artisans and craftsmen living in struggling communities around the world through the purchase of handmade items such as Peruvian rugs, Guatemalan textiles and Mexican pottery.
The fair trade products purchased at WorldFest will benefit people who live on incomes of less than a dollar a day, organizers said. The fair trade movement is an attempt to promote international labor standards and social policy in developing countries by working with marginalized workers, people most often taken advantage of by low wages and harsh working conditions such as sweatshops. Fair trade proponents work to alleviate poverty through sustainable development.That’s where Gamble’s perspective intersects with efforts of World Neighbors, the Oklahoma City-based nonprofit organization promoting the event.
Gamble operates Kam’s Kookery, a catering and cooking classes business in Oklahoma City. She buys as much of her produce as possible from local growers at farmers markets and her meat – including buffalo and venison – from Oklahoma producers through the Oklahoma City Slow Food Convivium. She also tends an organic garden of her own. “We work with farmers to work their land organically, with as little environmental impact as possible, so that it is easily sustainable,” event spokeswoman Erin Engelke said. “That’s why we try to embrace the same attitude locally with the people we work with, like Kam.”
The co-founders of the PrimaCafe coffee roasting company also are big believers in fair trade and sustainable systems. The Oklahoma City company is providing the coffee products at WorldFest. PrimaCafe is a Fair Trade Certified retailer and tries to avoid traditional business models that revolve around mass-produced and mass-distributed products, co-founder Lee Morrison said. Those practices promote poverty and social stratification instead of economic equity and environmental sustainability.
“It’s the local artisans that are getting a little more attention, and that’s why we like the sustainable model. It supports them and puts the money directly into the hands of the people who are doing the most work and the best quality work,” Morrison said. “I’ve been a supporter of World Neighbors for years, and one day it occurred to me that our philosophies were very similar. We want to see artisan farmers earn enough money to actually live on,” he said. “There’s a tremendous markup in a bag of coffee, and it just doesn’t seem right that farmers are so impoverished.”
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