Equal Exchange is the largest and oldest for-profit Fair trade organization in the United States. It offers organic and fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate from farmer cooperatives in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Recently, equal exchange began applying Fair trade principles to small-scale farmer cooperatives in the United States and has added domestic pecans, cranberries, and almonds to its collection of products. In addition, the equal exchange workers who process and market these products are organized as a cooperative in order to attend to their needs as workers. Equal Exchange’s commitment to fairness and empowerment makes the organization stand out as an important example of economic democracy. Its members are living the values of sustainability and justice in practical and powerful ways. When students learn what equal exchange is accomplishing today, they will be able to envision new ways to address the challenges we’re facing in our complicated world and will provide valuable leadership for the future. At Equal Exchange we all walk around like we own the place. That's because we all do! Our co-op has over 100 worker-owners, each with an equal stake - and an equal vote - in our business. All EE products (coffee, tea, chocolate bars, cocoa, sugar, bananas, almonds and olive oil) are Fair Trade and most products are organic. Twenty–seven years later not only is EE doing good - it is doing well. Sales of EE have grown from zero in 1986 to $1,000,000 in 1991 to $42,887,000 in 2010. In 2011, sales increased another 9% to $46,819,829. They are projected to exceed $50,000,000 in 2012. The recession in 2008 also affected negatively to EE’s growth. Specifically, before crisis, sales revenues still grew by 17%, but from that time, sales dropped dramatically to 4% in 2009, and only 1.9% in 2010. Two main problems during recession are to help the farmers and maintain profit simultaneously.