It’s the UnTours Foundation’s 20th anniversary on April 22nd. Yeah!! You didn’t hear about our 1st or 10th anniversaries not because we didn’t have a Blog then, but because Hal kept the foundation a secret. Well, sort of. He just didn’t think you’d necessarily be interested. Hal was busy at that time putting his salary…
When foundation board member Bill Wiedmann isn’t working on our behalf or eating tons of veggies from his garden with his family, (his lovely wife, Claire, took this photo), he’s co-directing his Fair Trade company, Singing Dog Vanilla. If you thought vanilla was an insignificant teaspoon in a recipe, you haven’t had really great vanilla….
Our guest Blogger this week is Suzanne Cotter, who’s promoting the Fair Trade Federation‘s May conference in Raleigh. We are great fans of the Fair Trade Federation and the integrity it brings to the Fair Trade movement. Here’s Suzanne………. Interested in Dedicated Fair Trade Businesses? Across the US and Canada, lots of dedicated, holistic fair…
Mariana Lamaison Sears, our guest Blogger this week, attends our weekly Fair Trade Committee meetings along with her adorable daughter, Mora, pictured here. In addition to believing in trading fairly, Mariana, originally from Argentina, loves the outdoors, practicing yoga, writing, and staying home with her kids! Mariana just wrote a Blog on Fair Trade clothing…
Our guest blogger this week, Aimee Ralph, is the wonderful intern for our Fair Trade Committee here in our hometown of Media, PA. She’s a Corporate Communications major with a minor in Civic and Community Engagement at Penn State Brandywine. She’s also an intern at the National MS Society in Philadelphia. She hopes to have…
While our foundation invests in green businesses, we at the UnTours office try to walk lighter and greener on the planet. Worms compost our veggie scraps in our kitchen, solar panels generate a lot of our electricity, and we turn to places like Green America to give us guidance on easing up on our carbon…
Photo by Bloodsworth Film Hal believes that money – and people for that matter! – should be working most of the time. So, when the foundation has funds waiting in the bank for a promised start date of a loan, we look for interim places to put those funds, where they can do some good…
When Hal suggested in 2005 that we make our hometown of Media, PA, a Fair Trade town, I responded by laughing! But alas, it proved to be an idea whose time had come. Media was ready for that vision and 23 towns and cities from Boston to San Francisco have followed suit. Our foundation’s loans…
Pennsylvania is the 12th state to make “benefit corporations” a legal entity. These corporations are required by law to create general benefit for society, which includes shareholders, employees, the community at large, and the environment. Of course, rigourous third party standards are part of this. UnTours has been a benefit corporation since 2007 when B…
Photo from Faktum Hotels As you may know, this year we’ve expanded our Foundation Fridays posts to include more than just news & updates about the UnTours Foundation. As Marilee already explained earlier, we will continue to include exciting news about the Foundation but will also have broader posts about things like our concern for…