Friday, November 12, 2010

Your Olive Branch Announces Winner of “I Love Fair Trade!” Contest



Following a summer-long open submission period and an online vote, Your Olive Branch is pleased to announce the winner of its I Love Fair Trade! contest. Bryan Parys, whose written submission, “Seeing Max in the Backyard,” garnered over 40% of the vote, will receive $2,000 worth of fair trade products from Alter-Eco and Indigenous Designs, two of the contest’s sponsors.

Throughout the summer, Your Olive Branch invited people across the world to creatively express what fair trade products mean to them through words, video, images, and other media. Dubbed “I Love Fair Trade,“ the contest’s entrants produced a rich variety of submissions covering topics such as the role fair trade products play in their lives, how and why they support fair trade, or how they think fair trade contributes to global peace and sustainability.

“The response was tremendous,” says Tom Willits, Your Olive Branch’s Executive Director. “To see people from across the globe sending us their words, their artwork, their videos, and even their songs about the importance of fair trade–it was a truly uplifting experience.”

After reviewing all of the submissions, the contest judges selected ten finalists. From then on, the winner was to be determined by an online vote based on the ten creative pieces, all of which are still on display at YourOliveBranch.org.

Bryan Parys’s “Seeing Max in the Backyard,” a work of creative non-fiction, can be viewed in its entirety here.