The Preda Foundation has been trading with partners both North and South in this movement since 1974. As a Southern Alternative Trading Organization and former member of the executive Committee of the International Association of Fair Trade (IFAT) Preda has been contributing to the concept of Fair Trade and Alternative Trade for some time. Preda has been marketing and exporting the products of many producer groups and supports a Grameen Type banking system project for 240 impoverished women in Olongapo.

FAIR TRADE IS ESSENTIALLY paying a just price for products produced under environmentally sustainable and just social conditions What is a just price of course is relative top local conditions. However it reached through respectful dialogue not a buyer's or seller's dictates or demands. Both parties have a relationship based on respect, and decision making process is influenced strongly by the manner in which they hold Human Dignity in highest regard.

Fair trade is also a process by which producers have the means to produce their products with a fair chance to succeed. It means the buyer does not have the producer capitalize the entire production but where advances are made, and payments of balances are on time. Other cooperative actions such as design workshops, marketing strategies, packaging etc are discussed and agreed. Fair Trade is about getting the best for the Producers so that they can get to market and bypass loan sharks, cartels monopolies and the absence of capital.

Fair trade is not just a relationship with a group of producers who supply good to sale for fair prices. Fair Trade as an activity in itself is a decisive action to uphold important ethical and moral principles and they must be clearly and forcefully communicated to the world. Fair Trade teaches by example - good example. It teaches all who can be reached and will listen. Therefore it is a movement for justice and equity and human rights. Because the rights to food, shelter and the needs of life are impossible without a livelihood to provide them, people need the ability to produce and prosper, it is this that will ensure their Human Rights.

Fair trade is also about UNFAIR trade. We cannot stand by and remain silent when the poor are being mercilessly exploited, abused and enslaved by liberal capitalism. Fair Trade organizations have a moral obligation to campaign against unfair trade practices that are destroying the environment or using child labor in making carpets as much as they have to practice Fair Trade. Campaigning for Social Justice is an essential role of an Alternative or Fair Trading Organization.

Many in the fair trade movement realize that trading honestly and justly however good it is will not change the underlying causes of poverty. The inequality of living standards today where a minority live in luxury and comfort surrounded by the security of the welfare state while billions live in hunger and want calls for action that will bring change on a global scale. But the question is how and what to do?

The disparity between rich and poor troubles the conscience of many to the point where they cannot enjoy their wealth and the prestige it gives them. Many feel that they lead a privileged life but yet they are unhappy because they know there are so many who suffer perhaps because of the unjust trading policies of their own society. Much of their working life contributes to that unjust system. There must be more they can do besides talking about it.

Fair Trade for some became the answer. We may not be able to change the unjust world, they said, but we can help a few by trading fairly with them and restoring their pride, dignity and self-sufficiency. Others went further and believed that while practicing FAIR TRADE THEY MUST ALSO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC AS TO THE CONDITIONS IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES THAT MUST BE CHANGED. Exactly how they can be changed is not always made clear in the education materials. But knowing about a problem is not the same as acting on that knowledge to change it. ATOs need to provide the issue and the campaign as an occasion for public to actively participate. All of us who have joined rallies or mass actions know that we are changed by the experience.

Campaigning is a vital and important activity for a FTO/ATO and for all to participate in. In fact without it can we really call ourselves an Alternative Organization to the unjust system? ALTERNATIVE or FAIR TRADING ORGANIZATIONS (ATOs / FTOs) owe their existence to the perfidy and evil of human kind.

Greed, avarice and the desire to dominate others economically and politically leads to unjust oppressive practices that exploit the ignorance and poverty of the weak. This human trait has brought about a situation where a few elite people in society control and manipulate the economic activities of many millions of people.

Such unjust practices have been institutionalized into a trading system that is now world wide, operating through agencies like APEC and THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION. If this is evil on a grand scale then there is a compelling challenge for the Alternative or Fair Trade Movement to confront it anew if world poverty is to be solved. Uncontrolled Free trade, imposed by dominating nations wipe out local and indigenous industry and enrich the more powerful trading country all the more. The rich become richer and the poor poorer.

The Cartels

It could be said that the World is ruled by trading cartels rather than governments. The Transnational companies own allegiance to no nation and no power outside themselves. Where the corporate Executive Officer of such a company can earn a salary of over a million dollars a year and the company can count profits in the billions then it is not surprising that millions live in the most unspeakable poverty, ignorance and degradation throughout the world while the elite live in unbelievable luxury. It seems that the modern day Lazarus at the gates of the rich don't even have the sympathy of the dogs to lick their sores - they had to eat them.

The Beginning of the ATOs

The Alternative or Fair Trade Movement set out in the early days to confront this terrible injustice. It chose education and example as its mode of action. Education has for the more active organizations has taken on the campaign strategy sometimes with positive effect. Today the campaign strategy has largely fallen by the wayside but others make use of it with devastating effect such as Greenpeace who have forced changes in government policy and even made corporations like Shell to change their environmental damaging ways. All this by educating and arousing public awareness by dramatic actions. If they can do it for the trees and the whales why not for the impoverished starving masses who are increasing their numbers to give themselves a better chance of survival since huge numbers of them are killed by hunger and sickness?

Campaigning

The Fair Trade movement ought to return to the campaign trail to confront the unjust trading cartels and systems and challenge them to change trading attitudes from a fixation with "maximizing profits" to a moral concern to "benefit the producers and end poverty". It is a movement that should be exerting every effort to convince as many as possible in the commercial world to practice just and honest trade as the way to redress the unconscionable poverty and exploitation that causes unbearable suffering around the world.

I believe that somehow the movement has perhaps lost it's way a bit in this regard. Desperate to survive the heat of modern competition from commercial companies and fake ATO's the genuine ATO's have turned to the commercial world's management techniques to improve efficiency and we should ask if they have been somewhat seduced by them concentrating more on "business" and less on education, commitment and involvement through activism and campaigning for just trading and against injustice.

Modern Managers Out of Touch With the Poor?

The modern managers of Northern ATO's may not have been exposed to the principles, vision and mission of the ATO movement and perhaps have never lived in a Third World Country or even visited one for any length of time. ATOs or FTO's as some call themselves have to work within an unjust trading system. How to do this without being corrupted by it and its practices calls for constant vigilance and constant review of practice to determine that the trading is not compromising the principles of fairness and justice.

Working within the system can make traders dependent on it and thus a weakness is immediately apparent. Criticism of the existing injustices and the political and trading structures that thrive on exploitation of the poor can be dangerous or bad for business. However such critical activity and consumer education and campaigning has been one of the most important activities of the FTO movement in the past. These days there is much too little of it to inspire a new generation of young people to selfless giving or to counter the seduction of the materialistic world that makes wearing the latest brand name designer jeans more important than saving children from the slavery of the Asian carpet factories.

ATO's who have wandered from the campaign trail are slowly dying principally because they are selling to an older generation of principled people but not the youth of the new generation whom they have failed to sufficiently inspire with concern for the poor. In a politically oppressed society in the developing world an ATO could be subject to harassment, threats and charges for criticizing exploitative practices, policies of cartels multinationals and economic agencies. Some understandably shun such radical activities. However in the North where there is greater freedom to speak out more needs to be done. This was the original basis of North-South solidarity - trading came at a later stage.

An ATO/FTO that trades justly, providing better markets to small producer groups is still only a intermediate solution because the scale of its operation reaches just a few of the many millions who live in wretched conditions, bonded and exploited. Constant effort and activism is needed to address the root causes. Such development education through campaigns for the youth is needed as much in the South as in the North. Without action programmes are ATOs really Alternative to anything? Or just a commercial enterprise with a charitable point of view? Besides looking at the immediate terms of the trade such as prices paid, and benefits shared, services rendered, levels of self-reliance self-esteem and prosperity reached an evaluation of an FTO/ATO must consider the contribution of the FTO/ATO to challenging society and working to change the selfish attitude that permits exploitation and allows world wide inequalities between rich and poor.

Alternative Tourism as an Educational Experience

One practical way of developing commitment and understanding is exposure visits by Northern people to producers in the South through alternative Tourism. Meeting the poor of the South is a sure form of education that cannot be equalled. Preda presently hosts many such groups every year from Japan, Germany and other European countries. Many of our visitors are now involved in campaigns to stop exploitation of children in the labor force and to make the world of trading a more just and fair relationship.