The University of Houston Students for Fair Trade (UHSFT) recently won a major victory on their campus. Their university administration decided this month that Java City, a campus coffee shop located in UH’s student center will only serve fair trade certified coffee starting in the fall. This has been a major request of UHSFT for some time.

Some of UHSFT’s other victories have included:

•  Made fair trade coffee available in all campus corporate coffee outlets (but not the dining halls)
• Made Fair Trade greeting cards available in UH’s Barnes and Noble-run campus bookstore
• Helped make a small business, Hope for Women, become an official vendor for all Barnes and Nobles campus stores nationwide
• Made fair trade coffee available in campus dining halls
• Placed signage and brochures about fair trade coffee at every coffee outlet
• Generated quite a bit of local and national publicity,
• Received grants from Transfair USA and Campus Progress
• Helped a local business, Katz Coffee (owned by UH alum Avi Katz) begin the first all fair trade coffee outlet on the UH campus

On March 30 UHSFT kicked off a new fair food campaign—focusing on just wages and working conditions for tomato pickers—in solidarity with the Student Farmworkers Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

UHSFT has received Campus Progress Action Grants for two years now. Action grants make $200-$1,000 available to progressive issue campaigns led by college students and young people. Grantees will also get assistance with events, publicity, training, and other resources.