Rather than getting squeezed by conventional trade, thousands of artisans and farmers around the world will have enough money to provide their families with food, shelter, education, and health care.
The Fair Trade movement is a worldwide phenomenon that holds at its core the belief that people come before profits. Fair Trade is a response to the global inequalities caused by the conventional trading system that has all too often resulted in the rich becoming richer whilst the producers at the bottom of the trade chain remain desperately poor.
In order for an organisation to be recognised as Fair Trade, it must satisfy the 10 standards of the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO), the first of which is the payment of a fair price, determined through dialogue with the producer groups.
By working directly with producer groups, Fair Trade avoids middlemen. Conventional trade normally requires the use of 3-10 middlemen. Avoiding this has the threefold advantage of allowing the producer to have a greater cut of the final selling price, cutting the cost of importation, and increasing transparency for the Fair Trade Organisation.
It is also crucial to commit to long- term, reliable trade relationships. Conventional traders will often cancel orders or renegotiate the prices after the orders have been placed, leaving the producers vulnerable and making their work risky.
Respecting human rights is fundamental to Fair Trade, particularly those of women and children. Women remain disproportionately amongst the poorest in society and often have no social safety nets, no education, no voice, and few choices. For these reasons, 70% of the producers that Ten Thousand Villages / Dix Mille Villages (a non-profit FTO that is one of the pioneers of the movement- full disclosure: your correspondent proudly manages one of their stores) works with are women. Women are given an equal voice and are always paid the same salaries as men. Producer groups are also often able to offer services and programmes to their workers and to the wider community, including help with education, medical care, insurance, revolving loans, skills training, and profit sharing.
For trade to be truly fair the local environment of the producers must be respected as well. Fair Trade dealers must work with producers to support the use of clean fuels, clean production methods, and sustainable materials. Indeed, many products are made of re- used or re-cycled or re-claimed materials.
One such producer group is Get Paper. Based in Nepal, Get Paper started out as a small income-generating project for Dalits— the lower caste of so- called Untouchables. Paper making was chosen because the process is fairly simple to learn and because of the abundance of raw materials— recycled waste paper and cotton, water hyacinth, jute, and even corn husks. Since the start of the project, the workforce has grown from 14 employees to 125, with additional seasonal workers to boot. As well as fair wages, the workers are provided with free lunches, health benefits, pension funds, and a share in company profits.
Since 1993, Get Paper has used 25% of its profits to support various community development initiatives. They have planted over 2,000 trees as Fair Dues continued from page 5 part of their reforestation project and have developed a very successful HIV/ Aids Education Program.
The project of which Get Paper is most proud is the “Send Your Daughter To School” campaign. Tragically, Nepalese girls born into very poor families are often sent to work in brothels in India to earn money to help support their families. Firmly believing that education is the key to ending this practice, Get Paper built a series of girls’ schools. After it became apparent that the very poorest people were still not sending their daughters to school, Get Paper offered the very poorest family in the village a small allowance on the condition that their girl went to school every day; this inspired the families of those who were a little better off to send their daughters to school as well.
Get Paper has succeeded in making life better for its employees and for Nepalese all around the country, which is what Fair Trade is all about.
Sally Richmond is the manager of Montreal’s Ten Thousand Villages- Monkland as well as a Fair Trade activist.
