November Coupon:

Upcoming Events

November Event: Saturday the 17th, 1-4 pm

Sip soup, nibble cornbread and meet the women behind Denver's Women's Bean Project.

The Women's Bean Project is a non-profit organization in Denver that teaches job readiness and life skills training through their gourmet production business. Women participate with the goal of transforming their lives and moving toward self-sufficiency.

Staff from the project will be at Momentum from 1-4 pm serving their famous bean soups and warm cornbread samples.

Momentum is donating 100% of the day's profits from the sale of Women's Bean Project products to this inspiring non-profit organization.

December Event: Saturday the 1st, 1-4pm*

SHOP FOR CHANGE ON WORLD AIDS DAY

Momentum will be hosting a special event on Saturday, December 1st in commemoration of World AIDS Day. Momentum will donate 15% of all their sales on that day to Embrace The World, a sub-group of Boulder County AIDS Project. This committee is comprised of Boulder County citizens who raise funds to support small grassroots international organizations devoted to HIV/AIDS education, prevention, mitigation, and relief, as well as educate interested Boulder/Denver residents about the HIV/AIDS pandemic through outreach activities and speaking presentations. Former grant recipients include programs supporting AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Nepal, and Thailand.

Committee members and grant recipients will be at Momentum from 1-4 pm to answer questions. Your purchases at Momentum on World AIDS Day will directly help create change in the world in several ways:

1. By providing needed employment to artisans from over 50 countries, many of whom are HIV+ or living with AIDS, who craft beautiful Fair Trade products.
2. By increasing the grant amount awarded to Embrace the World's 2007 program recipients with 15% of Momentum's profits on Saturday, November 1st.

Come join us on World AIDS Day and shop to make a difference!

* Our December event will be held on Dec 1st in lieu of our usual third Saturday of the month event but will return to the normal 3rd Saturday schedule in January.

News

Women Who Make a Difference Award

Jenny Natapow, Momentum's co-founder, was recently honored by the University of Colorado's (CU) Women's Resource Center at their 8th annual “Women Who Make A Difference” awards ceremony. This award is granted to women in the local community whose work and passion helps to support others in their pursuits and dreams. Jenny was nominated by Izabela Kenney, the Academic Advisor in CU's Department of Ethnic and Gender Studies. Congratulations, Jenny!

Co-op America Membership

We are pleased to announce that Momentum has been accepted as a member of Co-op America. The mission of Co-op America is to harness the economic power of consumers, investors and businesses to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. With a network of over 65,000 individual and 3,000 business members, Co-op America is the largest network of socially and environmentally responsible businesses in the United States. Momentum will be listed in their 2008 publication, the National Green Pages, a directory listing nearly 3,000 businesses that have made firm commitments to sustainable, socially just principles, including the support of sweatshop-free labor, organic farms, Fair Trade, and cruelty-free products.

Updates

Fair Trade Month

October was Fair Trade Month. Momentum participated by not only filling our information center with information on the benefits of purchasing Fair Trade chocolate (this Halloween and always), but also by providing parents, kids, and teachers with resources for raising awareness around the prevalent poverty and child-labor in cocoa-growing communities, and by participating in the first annual reverse-trick-or-treating national campaign.

Fair Trade Month Celebration

We would like to thank all of you who came to our October 17th coffee and chocolate tasting in celebration of Fair Trade Month. Congratulations to Kristina Cizmar for winning a $75 Momentum gift certificate by correctly identifying the mystery chocolate flavor – COCONUT CURRY. We also had six runners-up who correctly guessed at least one of the spices present in the coconut curry. They each received 1-pound bags of delicious Fair Trade and organic coffee. Our coffee and chocolate tasting served as the kick-off event for our new chocolate line from Theo Chocolates in Seattle, WA. Theo Chocolates is the only certified roaster of Fair Trade cocoa in the U.S. (FYI - for our Seattle readers and anyone planning a trip to Seattle, they also give tours of their factory.)

Reverse-Trick-or-Treating

This Halloween, costumed kids and adults in 300 cities across America, including Boulder, treated neighbors to Fair Trade dark chocolate in the name of a good cause.

They creatively turned the traditional Halloween ritual on its head by reverse-trick-or-treating. Tens of thousands of Fair Trade chocolate samples were passed out by children trick-or-treaters to adults. The costumed children also handed out educational information which explained the benefits of Fair Trade chocolate due to the chronic poverty in cocoa-growing communities, the abysmal working conditions, and the use of exploited child labor in the Ivory Coast, which produces 40% of the world's cocoa.

The Reverse-Trick-or-Treating program was sponsored by human and labor rights groups and Fair Trade chocolate companies, including Global Exchange, The International Labor Rights Fund, Co-op America, and Equal Exchange, in order to raise awareness about Fair Trade Certified chocolate as a solution to poverty and labor abuses in the cocoa industry. Fair Trade farmers are required to abide by international labor laws that prohibit child labor. In addition, the Fair Trade system also ensures that farmers receive a fair, stable price for their cocoa and that environmentally sustainable farming practices are applied.

US consumers consume 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate annually, representing nearly half the world's supply. The International Institute for Tropical Agriculture for USAID has estimated that 284,000 children work in abusive child labor conditions on cocoa farms in West Africa, the world's largest cocoa producing region, and that 64% of those children are under 14 years old.

"Chocolate isn't so sweet if it's made by kids in Africa who don't get to go to school," said 6-year-old Lucas Rich of Santa Monica, CA, one of the thousands of kids who passed out Fair Trade chocolate to adults this Halloween. Reverse-trick-or-treating illustrates a way in which dominant cocoa and chocolate companies can fight cocoa poverty and child labor - by simply using Fair Trade Certified cocoa.

Momentum staff celebrated Halloween by dressing up and handing out Fair Trade chocolates to kids of all ages.

Momentum | 1625 Pearl Street | Boulder, Colorado 80302 | 303-440-7744
Store Hours: Tues-Sat 10-6, Sun 11-5, Closed Mondays

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