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Fairtrade
Eastbourne meeting, 15th August 2007
Guest speaker Barbara
Wilson By Miriam Miklaszewska
A report on a visit and talk from Barbra
Wilson from Brighton & Hove Fairtrade Group and a founder of “Love that stuff” Fair Trade
company.
Barbara
began by sharing ideas used by the
Brighton Fairtrade Group that included preparing a list of businesses
using Fairtrade in Brighton accompanied by a map available for the
general public on the website also promoting the
variety of FT products available to buy in Brighton. Very interesting
and new was for us were the ideas of running a Fairtrade open house
during
festivals (showing a variety of FT products), “blind
testing” in town with FT chocolate and a non FT one and postcard or
packaging design competition.
Barbra
told the Group also about her Fair Trade not-for-profit
company. She works with several groups
from Africa, South Asia and Central America producing Fair Trade goods
(including clothes, jewellery, accessories and household) that belong
to IFAT
(International Federation of Alternative Trade) and BAFTS (British
Association of Fair Trade Shops). She has visited many of
the groups she is cooperating with to see their products and get to
know how does Fairtrade work for them.
Many
of the groups became Fair Trade
producers more then 20 years ago, thanks to which their members are
now being paid three to eight times more. This allows them live
beyond being subsistence farmers and to be
able to afford the basic human necessities - housing, access to
drinking water and hospitals or send
their children to school. Without the Fair
Trade scheme many of those producers would live
below the poverty level. Fair Trade in many cases empowers disabled
people and women who are less privileged
in many countries. Bombulu from Kenya started as a rehabilitation
centre and now their workshop employes 400 disabled people. Fair Trade
gave them a chance to use their skills and work towards not only
financial but also social independence. The other African group - The
National Association of Women's Organisations of Uganda (NAWOU) is a
cooperative of few thousand mainly rural women who help support their
families through making banana fibre and rafia fruit baskets using
the traditional skills. As a result of this they can supplement the
subsistence farming. Similar role play groups in Northern India and
Nepal who were set up to enable untouchables and low caste women
work.
“I
saw women making the most amazingly coloured straw mats and was
impressed by the community there. They had organic gardens and
fields, which they managed with interplanting, so they had no need
for pesticides. There was a soe workshop, a convent a deaf school,
two secondary schools and a primary school. Women here made baskets
too, which they supplied to NAWOU. NAWOU then check, market and ship
baskets abroad for a very modest percentage. They also sell to the
home market but, like most countries, Uganda needs export sales to
generate income”.
Fair
Trade strongly encourages the passing on of skills within the local
community and establishes long term relationships. Selling
carved and painted soapstone bowls and jewellery boxes to Fairtrade
traders enables Undugu in Kenya raise funds for street children and
other marginalised people in Nairobi. The
revenue from this also helps with education and training and this
provides skills for young people and their families and rehabilitates
them or helps prevent them starting on a life on the street.
What
is very important, buyers like Barbra open up
the Western markets
to the producers who incorporate
traditional techniques with new trends. The specialism
of women’s producers from Godovari in India is lace making and they
are adapting their traditional craft to more modern designs. Barbra
is just discussing with them the idea of making cotton and lace
blouses to widen the range of products they are offering. This group
of 1000 woman has to be contacted via post or fax because
infrastructure is so minimal in their region that they do not have
email. But hopefully thanks to sustainable relations with Fair Trade
traders they will be able to raise funds to build a shelter for the
women to work together and have access to computer and internet.
Members of the group in Bolivia still follow
their original goals, which are to make traditional textiles and
artwork to celebrate their Andean way of life and earn a reasonable
living to support themselves and their families. “Their way of
life has not changed greatly except they now have more choice: the
children can go to school; the women have classes in health, crafts
and literacy; and they can buy healthier food”.
Many
groups, Barbra was telling us, say that Fair Trade is not about money
but about the dialogue and long term relations between the producers
and buyers. Barbra also underlined the
fact that by choosing Fair Trade
products we, the consumers, are being given a chance to get the
answers to the basic questions of by
whom, how and where goods were made.
Barbara also told the audience huddled in the back of the Greenhouse
Pub on Station Steet, about the monthly market she organises
in the Friends Meeting House, Brighton with other Fair Trade
traders and local producers. It offers a variety of fair trade goods
including household, clothes, jewellery and other accessories
provided by love that staff, Oxfam and other stalls. Apart
from that Barbra liaises with several local producers who are selling
their fresh food and multicultural performers running drop-in
events which run alongside the day.
Barbra’s
talk was not only very interesting but also greatly inspiring for
campaigning beacause Fair Trade works!
For
more details and news from fairtrade producers around the world visit www.lovethatstuff.co.uk |
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