| Traidcraft,
established in 1979, fights poverty through a wide range of
trade-related activities. It’s unique structure - a
trading company and a development charity working together
- gives it a distinctive perspective on how trade can be made
to work for the poor.
Traidcraft
Exchange
aims to make trade work for the poor. It works to create
opportunities for poor people through its local partners to
harness the benefits of trade, helping them to develop sustainable
livelihoods and offering them hope for a better future. The
International
Development Department manages regional programmes
with partners overseas.
The objectives are to:
- Trade:
To facilitate fairer terms of trade and market access for
the poor and help buyers and suppliers to find and work
with each other.
- Support:
To build the skills and competencies of local organisations
and networks to improve the supply of practical business
services to the poor.
- Influence:
To determine the barriers that poorer people face in the
countries where we work and build the capacity of local
organisations to lobby and advocate for change on their
behalf.
Traidcraft
plc buys food, craft and textile items from marginalised
producers in Africa, Asia and Latin & Central America
to primarily sell in the UK.
Traidcraft:
Fair Trade (FT), market access and SLA
Traidcraft
is committed to fighting poverty through trade. It believes
that by working for more equitable trading arrangements, improved
working conditions and better access to markets, it can help
expand the opportunities available to the poor. To date,
SLA has made little explicit mention of markets but Traidcraft
has recognised that its principles are applicable to their
work on FT and market access. Indeed they echo many of the
challenges currently facing Traidcraft, namely, the multi-dimensional
nature of poverty, the difficulties of targeting the poor
and of scaling up effective poverty reduction initiatives,
and the need to mainstream sustainability.
This
growing interest in sustainable livelihoods prompted Traidcraft
to seek the assistance of DFIDs Sustainable Livelihoods Support
Office to explore how SLA might be applied within their work.
To date, Traidcrafts use of SLA has been both at a conceptual
and practical level to assist in the development and implementation
of programme and monitoring strategies. Within this context,
the SL framework has been adapted to consider sustainable
business outcomes and to identify points where the constraints
and opportunities faced by businesses can be influenced.
In this application, it is striking that Traidcraft has centred
its attention on the SL framework in its entirety, avoiding
the tendency to focus only on capital assets at the expense
of the vulnerability and policy/institutional contexts see
diagram below. This diagram illustrates the importance
of moving up one level above the individual to in this case
putting the business pentagon at the centre of the model.
Assessing the links between the two levels i.e., the individual
and the business is essential to identifying where effective
interventions can be made.
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