Pacha World Fair Trade Online Store

About Fair Trade

As all Fair Trade organizations, Pacha World, actively seeks out disadvantaged producers-especially woman & indigenous people and helps them create development opportunities that respect their culture & steward their local environment. We believe Fair Trade is the key to building economically sustainable communities throughout the world.

Fair Trade:

Fair Trade is an international sustainable trading model based on economic justice. It is an equitable and fair partnership between marketers in North America and producers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world. A fair trade partnership works to provide low-income artisans and farmers with a living wage for their work.

Fair Trade Criteria:

	Paying a fair wage – a living wage - in the local contex
	Offering employees opportunities for advancement
	Providing equal employment opportunities for all people, particularly the most disadvantaged
	Forced labor and exploitative child labor are not allowed
	Engaging in environmentally sustainable practices
	Being open to public accountability
	Building long-term trade relationships
	Providing healthy and safe working conditions
	Providing financial and technical assistance to producers whenever possible.

Fair Trade Benefits:

	Values and preserves traditional cultures
	Generates fair income for artisans around the world
	Educates consumers about trade and cultures
	Gender equity: 70% of craft artisans are woman
	Provides resources for community development
	Promotes environmental stewardship
	Promotes democratic participation in cooperative structures
	Supplements income in between harvest cycles
	Promotes ties between producers, traders and consumers

Free Trade vs. Fair Trade

NAFTA’s Free Trade Agreements protects the firms intellectual and property rights but does not protect the workers rights or the environment. This is allowing Multinational Corporation to bid down manufacturing contracts making them extremely profitable. At the same time workers in these developing countries that have liberalized trade laws to attract these corporation, are making 20-30% less* than they would have if the Free Trade Agreements were not in place.

-UN Conference on Trade and Development

What Fair Trade does is promotes equitable trading relationships that benefit workers, help sustain the environment, and build healthy communities.

Why do fair trade organizations support cooperative workplaces?

Cooperatives and producer associations provide a healthy alternative to large-scale manufacturing and sweatshop conditions, where unprotected workers earn below minimum wage and most of the profits flow to foreign investors and local elites who have little interest in ensuring the long term health of the communities in which they work. Fair trade organizations work primarily with small businesses, worker owned and democratically run cooperatives and associations which bring significant benefits to workers and their communities. By banding together, workers are able to access credit, reduce raw material costs and establish higher and more just prices for their products. Workers earn a greater return on their labor, and profits are distributed more equitably and often reinvested in community projects such as health clinics, child care, education, and literacy training. Workers learn important leadership and organizing skills, enabling self-reliant grassroots-driven development.

How Fair Trade Organizations Differ from Commercial Importers

	Their goal is to benefit the artisans they work with, not maximize profits. By reducing the number of middlemen and minimizing overhead costs, FTOs return up to 40 percent of the retail price of an item to the producer.
	They work with producer co-operatives that use democratic principles to ensure that working conditions are safe and dignified, and that producers have a say in how their products are created and sold. Co-operatives are encouraged to provide benefits such as health care, child care and access to loans.
	They encourage producers to reinvest their profits into their communities. Many producers who work with FTOs have committed time and money to build health clinics and support other community projects in their villages.
	Some Fair Trade Organizations work to shift processing and packaging activities to the developing world, so that as much work as possible will remain in the producer country. Often, such activities are performed abroad, depriving the neediest countries of the opportunity to boost their incomes. -by The Fair Trade Federation For more Fair Trade Information and Organizations please see our Resource Page.