Photo by Traci Todd When I hear anything about the Queen, including news of her Diamond Jubilee, I think of my British friend explaining to me that the Queen’s laundry is ALWAYS hung on a line and never put in a clothes dryer. “Only renters in Britain use clothes dryers, and the poor dears have…
This week, Hal headed back to Springfield High School, where he taught American Studies in the 1Elizabethkillough0’s while working on his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. He was one of 19 this year inducted into the school’s Achievers Hall of Fame. We were told that Hal could have up to 15 words describing his…
Kent Davidson is a member of the Media Borough Council, the government body that passed the resolution in 2006 making Media, PA, the First Fair Trade Town in the US. Citizens of Media, including our own beloved Hal, have traveled to international Fair Trade events and cooperatives in the past, but Kent’s recent travels mark…
Bob Seiwell is forever shaking his head while smiling as he sits at UnTours Foundation board meetings. It’s not that we don’t follow the law, it’s more that Hal is guided by an internal compass while the law is something that just doen’t enter his mind — ever! Many of us are inspired to follow…
Former UnTours staff member, Fran Douglas, is the peanut butter between Foundation donors Chris Noble and Chris Farrow-Noble. They are in front of our “upside-down” world map. ……..do you even want to visit your travel company? And where else does your travel staff person come out of retirement to greet and hug you? Only at…
When a cocoa farmer visited from Ghana, she told us how the men had to do more work under the Fair Trade system. Before Fair Trade, women and children harvested the cocoa while many men saw their roles as selling the cocoa and controlling the funds from the cocoa sales. With Fair Trade, children go…
The UnTours Foundation invests in microlending in the Global South, where not all microlending is created equal. Many projects supported by microlending help individuals along the unsustainable and destructive path of Western development assisting in the purchase of dangerous pesticides, GMO seeds, cars, and the like. Instead, we look for projects that offer the Global…
And what better day to visit Media than this October 21st when Fair Trade Live 2012 will be gracing the streets of “downtown” Media with dozens of musicians and dancers. Find unique clothing, jewelry, and other items at the Fair Fair. The UnTours Foundation helped organize Fair Trade Live 2008 when over 5,000 people showed…
I met Carol Metzker through the generous Trust Committee of her Quaker Meeting, Willistown Friends Meeting, which recently granted funds to our Fair Trade committee for educational materials. Carol is a writer, frequent speaker and coauthor of the book, Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn. An encounter with an 11-year-old girl rescued…
Norma Lee Black met a young Hal Taussig at the First Baptist Church in Amarillo, Texas, when she was 22. They married and have taken decades of adventures together from ranching in Colorado to working at UnTours. In 1993, Norma and Hal founded the UnTours Foundation as a way to channel UnTours profits to those…