Sep 25, 2010

Fair trade is top goal for new businessBy Doug SchorppQCTimes.com

The scene was too harsh for Becke Dawson of Davenport.

While in India in 2006 on a business trip with her husband, she kept hearing tapping sounds near a highway construction project in New Delhi.

“But nobody was working. Then, I kept hearing this tap, tap, tap;” she said.

Eventually she looked up and saw three small women on top of a huge boulder, chipping away at the rock. “I asked my friend what they were doing and she said ‘Making a gravel road.’ They will do anything to feed their children.”

Her heart broke to see such a scene, she said, and she wanted to do something about it. “As a person you cannot make an individual difference there,” she said.

But she found a way through groups to do something about Third World poverty and allowing people from around the world to earn a fair wage through a Fair Trade program.

A year later, she opened a fair trade shop with her sister, Mary Wagner, in Enterprise, Ala. And Sept. 6, she opened her own shop, SIS International, at 1605 Harrison St., Davenport.

“SIS” comes from the nickname of their grandmother and the fact that two sisters own the shops.

“Fair trade is huge in Europe. It is just becoming big in the United States,” Wagner said. “Every day there is something new; foods, coffee, bananas, spices, chocolate, jewelry, home decor.”

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