Greg Velario To Read New Book In Santa Fe, NM At A Fund Raiser For The Stop Santa Fe Gold Campaign.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, Oct. 21st, 2013: Greg Valerio will make his first stop in his American book tour, reading from Making Trouble: Fighting for Fair Trade Jewelry at New Mexico’s premier independent bookstore, Collected Works. The event, which will take place on Friday, October 25th at 6pm, will be a fund raising effort to support Fair Jewelry Action’s campaign to stop Santa Fe Gold’s proposed two billion dollar gold mine, just south of the city.
For fifteen years Greg crisscrossed the globe striving to apply fair trade standards to the jewelry business. From the Arctic circle, via the diamond fields of Sierra Leone to the South American rain forest, he has fought to give the consumer an ethically pure piece of jewelry, and to reward its producers with a fair wage and good working conditions.
Along the way, he has exposed the jewelry industry’s dirty secrets: pollution, child labor, criminality, exploitation, dangerous working practices, and more.
“Greg is transforming the mining sector through the jewelry sector,” said Marc Choyt, President of the Santa Fe jewelry company, Reflective Images; and co-founder, with Valerio, of Fair Jewelry Action. “This is a rare opportunity for Santa Feans to hear from a man who has changed an entire industry and the world through his activism.”
GREG VALERIO’s background is in human rights and environmental advocacy. As founder of CRED Jewellery, co-founder of the Alliance for Responsible Mining and co-founder of Fair Jewelry Action, he pioneered the fair trade jewelry movement. He was named Observer Ethical Awards Campaigner of the Year in 2011 by the UK’s Guardian News Group, above Greenpeace and Alveez.org.
He is currently working with FAIRTRADE International coordinating their International Gold program and Peace Direct in eastern Congo to support the establishment of a Peace Gold program with ex-combatants.
Maverick, pain in the arse, social entrepreneur, out of the box, radical, passionate, emotional, unmanageable, direct, to the point, breath of fresh air, rebel, visionary, scruffy, non-conformist, looks like a bum, economic terrorist and the most dangerous bastard have all been used to describe Greg and his commitment to human rights, ecological responsibility and fair trade in the jewelry sector.
“We stand on the shoulders of voiceless giants who anoint our rubies, sapphires, gold, silver, and diamonds with sweat born from their exploitation, and we casually pretend they do not exist,” he said.
MAKING TROUBLE: FIGHTING FOR FAIR TRADE JEWELLERY is Greg’s inspiring, funny, shocking, serious, and touching autobiography that provokes OUTRAGE, and makes you THINK about any jewelry purchase you might have made but also what must be DONE. Above all, it is the compelling story of one impressive man’s life and work.
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For more information, contact Marc Choyt at 505-988-7393 or [email protected]
