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Meet Caitlyn King, Fair Trade Towns USA Intern!

Courtney Lang February 16, 2012

Caitlyn with her parents dog Pepper at their home in Tahoe.

Caitlyn is the newest addition to the Fair Trade Towns USA national team and she’s been working on outreach to Fair Trade Town campaigns across the US for the past few weeks collecting information so that we can catalyze campaign growth.  We’re thankful to have her and hope you enjoy getting to know her like we have!

Hey There! I just want to drop in and introduce myself. My name is Caitlyn King and I am the newest intern addition to the Fair Trade Towns team. I work 3 days a week, and have been here for about 4 weeks now. I work closely with Courtney Lang on the Fair Trade Town campaigns. The first couple of weeks were very overwhelming with (what seemed like) endless amounts of information. Now that it has all soaked in I feel like I am more self-sufficient. Some of you may hear from me by phone or talk to me in the future, so I wanted to help you out and put a face to my name. I can’t wait for the next couple of weeks and working with all the campaigns over time!

Where is ‘home’ for you? I am a Northern California girl. I like to think I did most of growing up on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe. When I return ‘home’ for the holidays I go back to the Tahoe Basin to see my family and play in the area. Tahoe was a beautiful place to grow up and gave me a lot of opportunities. I had a wide range of random jobs including working at ski areas, renting jet skis in the summer, and as a barista in a small coffee shop. After 4 years of school in the Bay Area, Berkeley and the East Bay are slowly gaining the ‘home’ title as well.

What are your interests and random skills? As a last semester Senior at UC Berkeley, it is hard not to define myself as just being a student right now. Besides keeping up with my classes, I am pretty craftsy and active. I like to crochet and knit, and I bake when I get the chance. A majority of the time I skimp out and substitute my baking ingredients, so most of my concoctions either turn out flat or practically inedible. Luckily I have hungry roommates who clean up the leftovers and don’t critique the final outcome too much.

I love to run and do yoga. I wish I could do the latter more though. My favorite thing to do is navigate and learn about an area while running. I feel like you discover the most by foot, so running kills two birds with one stone. I was raised on ski’s, love to hike and backpack and just the outdoors in general.

How did you get involved with Fair Trade? I learned about Fair trade in one of my Development courses a few semesters back. The coffee shop I worked at in Tahoe served 3 or 4 fair trade coffees, but I wasn’t really aware of what it meant.  Once I was reintroduced to the concept, I was intrigued with how little I knew about it and the value that it holds to so many people around the world. After soaking in information, I was really excited to gain more knowledge.  Last spring I was plodded around the Cal campus in search of a ‘Fair Trade Specialist’ that I could speak with. My unfulfilled curiosity harvested many inquiries which I carried over into the Fall semester. All of my questions led to connections and the perfect opportunity to apply as an intern at Fair Trade USA. My curiosity is being fed by simply working in the environment. Every work day I realize how timing is everything and how much I have to learn. I am working with both the Fair Trade Town Campaigns and the Development Department and know that there is so much knowledge and experience to gain from my co-workers and the projects that are underweigh.

 

 

 

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Courtney Lang, National Organizer | Fair Trade Campaigns

Courtney Lang brings over 5 years of community organizing to Fair Trade Towns USA, building both the Local Food and Fair Trade networks in Vermont. As Local Food Coordinator with City Market/Onion River Cooperative, Courtney worked with local producers, institutions and consumers to grow the local food system and organize a strategic model for community engagement through farm tours, workshops, and local food challenges. Like many in the Fair Trade industry, Courtney was inspired to take action in Fair Trade when she witnessed child-labor first hand in Costa Rica. As a founding member of Fair Trade Burlington, she has worked with economic development organizations, businesses, and consumers to build awareness of Fair Trade among Vermonters. She also worked with a Fair Trade USA licensee, Vermont Coffee Company, as Friend Ambassador where she united the story of Fair Trade to every purchase of coffee.