Ethik provides careers for artisans--and timeless gifts for your employees: When it comes to corporate gifting, no one wants another tumbler.

• Author: Dodson, Jack

A ROSEWOOD, HAND-CARVED TIC-TAC-TOE SET produced by a fair trade organization in India that prioritizes working with women. A lucky seed bracelet made by an artisan collective in Uganda, where work can be difficult to find and extractive companies threaten the Mabira Forest. A mortar and pestle made by a family-owned Palestinian cooperative in Bethlehem living under occupation, facing severe obstacles around international trade.

These aren't the instinctual corporate gifts that many workers might receive from their employers each year like bags, sweaters, or water bottles. But shifting public awareness around environmental justice and labor rights has created a need for companies to think more critically about where they're sourcing their gifts and what values those choices reflect.

Ethik, a Utah company launched just before the start of the pandemic in 2019, commissions and distributes these products and many more from around the world to companies as corporate gift options in an effort to support artisans across the Global South. The company's goal is also to get workers in wealthier positions to learn about people and places that produce their goods in a way that's empowering and not dehumanizing.

"People tell us this all the time, Tm so sick of getting yet another Yeti tumbler,"' says founder Melissa Sevy. "People want to know, where did this come from, how is this sourced?"

Fast fashion and so-called "corporate gifting," often referred to as "swag," can be a major ethical issue in our hyper-globalized, mass-production economy. In a system built around cheaply made goods, appeasing workers with swag is often a knee-jerk reaction for companies across the globe.

But fast fashion models, which are reliant on a system of exploitation to ensure costs are low and manufacturing is fast, are built into everything--even multi-billion-dollar global events. Amid many allegations of harmful labor and human rights practices, one critique of the World Cup teams in Doha, Qatar, last year was that the players were wearing shirts produced in a Thai factory where workers were severely underpaid. Soccer balls produced for the event, while highly lucrative for the companies manufacturing them in Pakistan, are made by workers who earn two dollars an hour and work six days per week.

The world's most profitable enterprises, like FIFA--a nonprofit organization that earns billions in revenue from its television licensing deals, among many other things-are built...