Linking back to the "Writing On (and off) The Wall" column in Sunday's Daily News, here are some of the websites you can find that offer fair trade sports equipment or information about it:

== Fair Trade Sports: fairtradesports.com
Fair Trade Sports, Inc. donates all profits after taxes to children's charities, both domestically and internationally. Using the business model of the Newman's Own brand, Fair Trade Sports expects to reach profitability in late 2007. Until then, it is donating $1,000 annually to the organizations that benefit at-risk children worldwide.
Offices: 321 High School Road NE, Suite D3, #208; Bainbridge Island, WA 98110; 206-855-8222.
Fair Trade Sports products can also be found on eBay.com and at Amazon.com links.

==Y FOCUS-Ottawa: http://yfocus.ncf.ca/fairtrade/product.htm
Y FOCUS is the service club of the YMCA-YWCA in Canada and is a member of an international service club movement working with the YMCA in over 72 countries. The only criteria for membership is to be an idealist who wants to help others. The Fair Trade Sports program is a way to help build a more peaceful world in line with our national theme of "Building a Culture of Peace". Proceeds from the sale of sports balls will be used to fund peace building projects around the world.
The site also has a detailed explanation about what "fair trade" means and its ramifications: http://yfocus.ncf.ca/fairtrade/fairtrade.htm

Both Fair Trade Sports and Y FOCUS offer products made by Talon, a company based in Pakistan:
==Talon Fair Trade: TalonFairTrade.org
With a home office in Pakistan, and satellite offices in Temecula (covering the U.S.), England and Sweden. Pakistan supplies around 70 percent of the world’s soccer balls, with an estimated 44,000 men and women stitchers in the Sialkot region of Pakistan involved in the production of 35 million balls every year. International campaigns in the 1990s have succeeded in virtually eliminating child labor by gradually moving production away from home-based stitchers to independently monitored stitching centers and providing constructive alternatives for children such as basic education and skills training. The centers are operated by the main factories or by subcontractors and are segregated by gender to comply with religious and cultural values. However, low pay and a lack of social benefits remain issues for workers in the industry.

==The Emancipaton Network: Emancipationnetwork.com, and its products link: http://shopping.netsuite.com/madebysurvivors
T.E.N. Charities is a local and international response to the human rights emergency of human trafficking - the modern practice of slavery. It offers a way to become involved in the struggle to end slavery, and give the tools and support to mobilize your friends and your community. There are 27 million people around the world are believed to be enslaved, according to UNICEF. This is more than at any other time in history.

==Fairtrade Foundation: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/products_sportsballs.htm
Based in the UK.

==Ethletic sneakers: Ethletic.com and No Sweat Apparell: NoSweatApparel.com
Both offer shoes that look an awful lot like the old Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars (now owned by Nike). But they're not. And they have to tell you that. Otherwise, they feel the same and perform the same. Good enough for Wilt Chamberlain in his day.

==Educating For Justice: http://educatingforjustice.org/
EFJ is an Asbury Park, N.J.-based non-profit that develops, produces and distributes justice-oriented programming and content to the educational marketplace. Through research, online resources, digital filmmaking, and grassroots educational events, EFJ seeks to raise awareness about issues of justice and spark efforts for social change. It started in June, 2000, as the Olympic Living Wage Project to raise awareness about the labor abuses of Olympic apparel sponsors to athletes competing in the 2000 Sydney Games. As an experiment, two Americans lived in Indonesia on $1.25 a day, the income level of local factory workers, and brought the truth of that reality to Sydney through a major media campaign focused on these starvation wages paid to Nike and Adidas factory workers. Their documentary, "Sweat," is seeking funding to finish post production.
Thursday, Nike released a press release about resuming production of soccer balls in Pakistan with Silver Star Group, committed to new stanards in worker's rights.

This is a video clip of a story ESPN did on Nike sweatshops, provided on the Educating for Justice Website:

ESPN: St John's and Nike Sweatshops

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==World Centric: worldcentric.org
World Centric is non-profit organization working to reduce economic injustice and environmental degradation through education, community networks & sustainable enterprises.