Stephanie Faith Green (SFS ’05) doesn’t drink coffee. But that hasn’t prevented her from revolutionizing the way we consume caffeine at Georgetown – and around the world.
During her Georgetown career, Green spearheaded the fair trade coffee movement on campus, and she created a nationwide organization to help students at other schools do the same.
“My motivation for the work I do comes from my understanding of solidarity,” she said. “I was lucky enough to be born into an American family that placed a strong value on education, and I was lucky enough to be able to attend Georgetown University. Yet while I was here I constantly reminded myself of how rare my situation was to other people my age around the world.”
Green arrived on the Hilltop her freshman year with an idea. She wanted to create an international living wage, so she got involved with the Georgetown Solidarity Committee. One meeting featured a presentation on fair trade, and it piqued her interest.
After working with GSC to lay the groundwork, Green incorporated Georgetown Students for Fair Trade as its own student group and became its president at the start of her sophomore year.
GSFT embarked on a two-pronged campaign intended both to make Georgetown 100 percent fair trade certified and to educate the community. GSFT went into classrooms and Sellinger Lounge, giving presentations and even bringing in coffee farmers so that students could meet face-to-face the people that are affected by the coffee industry.
“We tried to get a donkey, but it didn’t work out,” she said.
GSFT also held taste tests to gauge student opinion and found that fair trade coffee had the support of “a majority of students by far,” according to Green.
Meanwhile, GSFT campaigned at the places on campus that serve coffee. Uncommon Grounds was the first to offer fair trade coffee as an option. The Medical Center and Marriott jumped on board, as well.
But fair trade doesn’t stop at coffee. GSFT also lobbied to make fair trade teas available on campus, and fair trade chocolate is also growing in popularity. GSFT also helped start a growing Hoya tradition, the Christmas-time Alternative Gift Sale, with its first fair trade craft sale two and a half years ago.
In the same way that fair trade isn’t just about coffee, Green’s involvement in such issues aren’t relegated to the Hilltop. After attending a program held by Oxfam America during the summer between her freshman and sophomore years, Green and George Washington University student Lina Musayev founded a national organization called United Students for Fair Trade to bring student groups together.
“There are all these groups across the country that are trying to get involved, but they don’t have anybody to go to for help. They don’t have the resources,” Musayev said. “Stephanie and I got together and thought of USFT to gather people together and make a real student movement out of this.”
And what a movement it became. When USFT started almost three years ago, there were 100 campuses involved, according to Musayev. Now over 300 schools participate in USFT.
“We started a listserve, we created a Web site and we had online all these resources for students, like people who wanted to start a club,” Green said. “We had a constitution, copies of resolutions, different things you could do, tactics, and we would answer questions for students.”
The organization also sponsors yearly national conferences which offer workshops on fair trade issues, the opportunity to meet other student activists, and interaction with groups in the coffee industry, non-government organizations and farmers. This year’s national conference in Chicago attracted 500 people.
“The movement started with two people, and now it’s over 500 people that want to be involved,” Musayev said. “It’s amazing that if you get so passionate about something and put yourself to action, you’ll get things done.”
Green now serves as the international coordinator for USFT as she and Musayev pass their leadership roles to the next generation of students.
Though her forays into fair trade began her freshman year at Georgetown, Green has always been involved in activism. During her high school years in Arizona, she founded a national organization called Generation Now to lower the voting age to 16, and she introduced legislation into the Arizona State Legislature and even testified before a legislative committee.
“It was because of that experience I had the confidence to establish United Students for Fair Trade in college,” she said.
Green now works mostly in refugee policy, giving her another way to reach out to others in her tradition of solidarity.
“Solidarity means fighting like hell for the rights of people you have not and will not ever meet across the globe because you hope that if you were in reverse situations, they would do the same for you,” she said. “That is humanity.”
