Index:
World Fair Trade Day
Kids need Fair Trade
Global journey - Fair Trade travels the world to spread the word!
World Fair Trade Day
World Fair Trade Day is the only international celebration of Fair Trade. Events will be taking place simultaneously across the globe.
The event is organised by International Fair Trade Association (IFAT) to promote global awareness of Fair Trade.IFAT members from all these countries, along with Fair Trade shops and networks will be hosting events including Fair Trade breakfasts, talks, music concerts, fashion shows and much more, to promote Fair Trade and campaign for justice in trade.
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IFAT has 300 Fair Trade member organisations in 70 different countries around the world, including People Tree. |  |
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Kids need Fair Trade
This year the theme of World Fair Trade Day is 'Kids need Fair Trade'. Fair Trade aims to fundamentally change economic and social structures and to empower marginalised people in order to help them escape the poverty trap.
If adults are paid a fair price for their work, they can afford to send their children to school, and the children themselves can have a childhood rather than having to work to support their families.
The Problem: In India child labour is illegal, but many see it as a traditional practice. The result is that these laws are rarely enforced. In workshops across Delhi child laborers are routinely forced to work 12 hour days. Working, eating and sleeping in the same cramped, poorly lit and ill-ventilated workshops. These children have no access to education and are not given time to play or just be children.
The Alternative: People Tree works with TARA Projects, a group that was established to address these issues: To defend the rights of the poor by opposing child labour, promoting education and offering financial security to its artisans.
Today Tara works with 500 families, providing them with vocational training, a regular income, and long term sercurity.
How does Tara fight against child labour?
- It ensures children are not used in its jewellery production,
- It supports 16 schools for children from disadvantaged families,
- It educates parents about the importance of schooling their children,
- It campaigns to persuade middle class Indian women not to buy glass bangles made by children.
Global journey - Fair Trade travels the world to spread the word!
Members of IFAT from 47 different countries have pulled together to spread the Fair Trade message.
Hundreds of thousands of people, politicians, celebrities and opinion leaders all over Asia, Latin America and Africa have already hit the streets to celebrate and promote Fair Trade. The global journey has been represented by an IFAT banner that has been paraded at events across the world, by rickshaw in Bangladesh, by horse in Cameroon, by Camel in Mali!
The banner is now in the UK, and as a precursor to World Fair Trade Day the banner will be delivered to London on the 11th May, where it will be met by representatives of Britain's IFAT members. It'll then be loaded onto a London bus (our camel equivalent!) and taken on a journey around IFAT's London based organizations to collect Fair Trade goods and information to distribute in Canterbury, (the next stop for the banner).
