1st training on CAMPAIGN

WHERE: Malta
WHEN: 5th-8th December 2009
WHAT: 4 days training to design a common campaign

In the 4 days of our first training, we experienced the sharing of information on a very crucial topic for a Fair Trade organisation (FTO): the campaigning. Indeed, FTOs are active at 2 main levels: on one hand, they promote Fair Trade products enabling their partners from the Global South to access the market and give Northern consumers a Fair option in their daily shopping. On the other hand, they commit to make a cultural change possible: to make every individual aware about the responsibility of his /her own actions, especially in the South. Indeed, even if FTOs believe in consumers' power, this is often not enough to change the rules of the game and a pledge for institutional change is needed also, when we look at the roots of the exclusion of our Southern partners.

In the framework of the contemporary challenge of our global world, we act in the middle of 3 major crisis (financial crisis, environmental crisis, food crisis). The several interconnections among the 3 different crisis underline the unsustainable neoliberal economic model, that Fair Trade aims at changing. We experienced that our partners are particularly suffering the effects of the so-called FOOD CRISIS, with high increase in crops' price that not always means higher profits for peasants but that, on the contrary, shows all the paradoxes and distortion of the global food market. We believe that the food crisis is not due to a lack of available food, as many say, but is the predictable result of a model that doesn't put the FOOD SOVEREIGNTY first, but the exploitation of man and Earth.

Our campaign consists, then, in the common claim for the RIGHT FOR FOOD as a fundamental human right to be assured for every human being. The right for food can be achieved by respecting farming agriculture and natural biodiversityy, by giving the Global South the possibility to enter a market without distortion and by promoting sounds patterns of production, such as the organic and Fair Trade ones.

Watch the interview to VANDANA SHIVA from the upcoming video "Seeds of Freedom"

Training materials available

Training materials available here

3rd Training on Rules & Criteria

WHERE: Bratislava
WHEN: 15th-17th June 2009
WHAT: 3 days training on the fair trade standards for organizations and labels

What is a Fair Trade organization? How does a product get a Fair Trade certification? And what is the difference between the two Fair Trade tracks, products versus organizations? The 3rd Enlarging Fair training answered those questions and raised new ones, fostering a debate among young Fair Traders, mostly from the New Member States of the EU. During the training , we explored the history and the recent updates of the World Fair Trade Organization and the Labelling Initiative FLO, thanx to the participation of international speakers.

The partecipants investigated the importance and the complementary approach of the different Fair Trade Tracks and exchange the history of the Fair Trade movement in their country. In particular, the Italian experience was described in a detailed way, given the peculiar process that Italian Fair Trade Organizations have shaped. In fact, in Italy the FT organizations have a high level of recognition and coordination to define the rules that distinguish Fair Traders from other social friendly initiatives. The debate about the rules and the Fair Trade standards will continue in each country, keeping an international coordination level in the following training sections and during specific initiatives of the partners.

Training Materials Available Here

4th Training on Education

WHERE: Brno
WHEN: 6th-8th November 2009
WHAT: 3 days training on didactical methodologies

One of the biggest challenge of trainers and educators is to adapt the teaching style to the group one is working with. During this traing, we experienced different teaching styles, learning the "to do" and "not to do" to conduct a succesful activity. The main challenge has been to tackle a very sensitive age: the transitional age, meaning those that are between 15 and 25 years old.

Training Materials Here

5th training on Campaigning

WHERE: Budapest
WHEN: 11th and 12th December 2009
WHAT: 2 days training on the managment of awareness rasing campaign

A very dense training has involved 18 people from Czeck Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Malta and Hungary for 2 days. The international group learnt about the European Agricaltural Policy, which represents the main framework for our rural development and it also effects the way the EU trades with its partner countries. Our interest in Nort/South relationship has been reflected in 2 regional focus: one on the ACP (Asian, Caribbean and Pacific countries) and the European Partnership Agreements with them, and one on the Mediterranean countries and the Barcellona process. Moreover, the group had the possibility to exchange experience and views with a Greenpeace Campaigner and a journalist, to understand what makes a campaign succesfull and how media interact with civil society and NGOs. During the workshop session, the participants planned a little campaign to put in practice the theory acquired during the training.

Download here the training materials

6th Training in Slovenia

Project partners gathered in Slovenia between 13th and 15th February for the sixth training on Fair Trade Rules and Criteria. Weather was wonderful, so were the sessions.

Training materials available here