Fair Trade Certified Apparel: Improving the Lives of Cotton Farmers and Factory Workers
Lower trade barriers has created wealth due to increased trade, yet this wealth has not trickled down to the poorest of the poor. Fair Trade USA’s Fair Trade Certified™ standards for apparel are the win-win solution that vulnerable garment workers, anti-sweatshop advocates and companies have been seeking. Low wages, dangerous working conditions and limited chance for advancement have been central concerns of both labor advocates and conscientious companies. The Fair Trade label guarantees that stringent environmental, economic, and labor criteria are met. It is a guarantee that farmers and workers receive a fair price and benefit from safe working conditions. Success is assured by connecting Fair Trade certified factories with U.S. companies that will purchase products on Fair Trade terms.
About You
About You
First Name
James
Last Name
Solada
Facebook Profile
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Fair Trade USA
Organization Website
Organization Country
United States, CA
Country where this project is creating social impact
India
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Innovation
Entry Form title
Fair Trade Certified Apparel: Improving the Lives of Cotton Farmers and Factory Workers
What change do you want to bring to the world?
Lower trade barriers has created wealth due to increased trade, yet this wealth has not trickled down to the poorest of the poor. Fair Trade USA’s Fair Trade Certified™ standards for apparel are the win-win solution that vulnerable garment workers, anti-sweatshop advocates and companies have been seeking. Low wages, dangerous working conditions and limited chance for advancement have been central concerns of both labor advocates and conscientious companies. The Fair Trade label guarantees that stringent environmental, economic, and labor criteria are met. It is a guarantee that farmers and workers receive a fair price and benefit from safe working conditions. Success is assured by connecting Fair Trade certified factories with U.S. companies that will purchase products on Fair Trade terms.
What are the primary activities of your project?
Fair Trade USA will provide training and capacity-building to 2,500 factory workers in India:
• Worker education and training. A critical component for all factories participating in this pilot program is worker education and capacity building. This training includes information unique to the new Fair Trade standards, such as the nature and uses of Fair Trade premiums, as well as training on fundamental aspects of workers’ rights, such as freedom to organize and grievance procedures.
• Factory inspection and certification. Fair Trade USA works with a network of local partners for factory training and auditing. Factories are audited against all aspects of the Fair Trade apparel standard. Performance standards track key indicators on income, empowerment, and environment. In this pilot, each participating manufacturing facility is evaluated on an annual basis to track how the facility is improving against the standards and whether workers are better off. This model can then be applied to the improvement of factory conditions for workers worldwide.
• Market outreach and linkage. Fair Trade USA also connects these model factories to U.S. customers that want to offer Fair Trade Certified products. Fair Trade USA has more than ten years of experience connecting developing world producer partners to value-added market opportunities in the United States. Fair Trade Certified products are found in over 60,000 U.S. retail outlets, including such mainstream industry leaders as Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target stores. Fair Trade USA’s garments team is working with more than 20 U.S.-based brands that have already committed to participating in this pilot program, and is engaged in active conversations with additional companies ranging from small, mission-driven brands to companies that supply major mainstream U.S. retailers.
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
Fair Trade USA’s Fair Trade Certified Apparel Program is the first-ever garment sector intervention to guarantee financial benefits to factory workers and to promote direct consumer engagement in more responsible manufacturing. Fair Trade USA developed standards to extend the proven Fair Trade model up the supply chain to workers at cut-and-sew facilities.
Fair Trade USA’s pilot is using standards developed over four years of feasibility research. Factory workers are trained on their rights and on the new Fair Trade performance standards against which their facilities will be audited. Fair Trade USA is now working with a dozen factories in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, together with international buyers.
Fair Trade delivers higher wages to individual workers in addition to community development earnings called “social premium funds.” Workers decide democratically whether to distribute social premium funds as a cash bonus or invest it in collective projects that benefit the entire community:
• Literacy training (India, Liberia)
• Computer classes
• Improved sanitation facilities (Liberia)
• Health services (India, Liberia, and Peru)
• Scholarships for high school students (Liberia)
Unlike interventions such as factory auditing against codes of conduct, this project links ethical manufacturing directly to a consumer-facing label with growing recognition. This initiative will extend an innovative pilot program to new factories in India and help to create a model for worker empowerment that can be replicated worldwide.
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
Fair Trade USA focuses on improving the lives of farmers and workers around the world, while empowering consumers in the U.S. to vote with their purchases. Through direct, equitable trade, farming and working families are able to eat better, keep their kids in school, improve health and housing, and invest in the future. Fair Trade helps keep families, local economies, the natural environment, and the larger community.
Fair Trade USA collaborates with a diverse group of supply chain stakeholders: regional and international trade organizations, businesses, exporters, importers, international development experts, and most importantly, Fair Trade producer cooperatives themselves.
Annually, Fair Trade USA recruits new farmer and worker producer groups into the Fair Trade system to benefit more farming communities and to supply U.S. companies with a stable and growing supply of sustainably sourced products. We provide training, quality improvement support, and market linkage to producers.
Here in the U.S., we are actively building a movement of Fair Trade committed advocates and ethical consumers. Fair Trade USA is growing a nationwide grassroots movement of students, consumers, educators, volunteer organizers, and local politicians through the Fair Trade Towns and Fair Trade Universities campaigns. There are currently campaigns running in more than 50 communities across the country.
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
Paul Rice is the President & CEO of Fair Trade USA, the leading certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States.
Prior to launching Fair Trade USA, Paul worked for 11 years as a rural development specialist in the mountains of Nicaragua, where he founded and led the country's first Fair Trade, organic coffee export cooperative. His first-hand experience over the last 27 years in the areas of global supply chain transparency, social auditing, sustainable agriculture, and cooperative enterprise development is unique in the certification world. Paul is now a leading advocate of global market linkage as a core strategy for sustainable community development.
Since launching the Fair Trade Certified™ label in 1998, Fair Trade USA has established Fair Trade as one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. food industry. Between 1999 and 2009, smallholder family farmers earned over $200 million in additional income selling to the U.S. Fair Trade market, allowing them to keep their kids in school, care for the land, and dramatically improve their living standards.
Paul has received numerous honors for his pioneering work as a social entrepreneur, including the Ashoka Fellowship (www.ashoka.org), the World Economic Forum Award for Social Entrepreneurship (www.schwabfound.org), Fast Company magazine’s Social Capitalist of the Year award (four-time winner), and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (www.skollfoundation.org).
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
Fair Trade USA enables sustainable development and community empowerment by cultivating a more equitable global trade model. In order to succeed, Fair Trade USA certifies and promotes Fair Trade products involving:
• Audits and Certification: of the global supply chain and transactions between U.S. companies, suppliers and distributors worldwide;
• Consumer Awareness: educating and informing domestic consumers, and bringing new manufacturers, distributors and retailers into the Fair Trade system; and
• Capacity Building: providing farmers and agricultural cooperatives with technical assistance, imparting critical business tools and information on labor rights, working conditions and adherence to strong environmental standards.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
101-1,000
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
Fair Trade USA will expand the network of countries, factories, and project partners involved with this initiative. Fair Trade USA will work at expanding the project nationally and internationally, so factory workers worldwide can receive an additional premium for their services.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
Like our food, our clothes have an impact on thousands of people, from cotton farmers in India to seamstresses in Nicaraguan factories, many of whom struggle to survive. Many believe that Fair Trade Certification, with its growing consumer recognition and widely recognized integrity, offers a solution to many of the development challenges faced by garment producers. In addition, Fair Trade garment standards can offer a more workable solution for manufacturing facilities dealing with a wide range of individual companies’ codes of conduct and terms of engagement, and for brands seeking credible third-party authentication of their responsible sourcing practices.
Tell us about your partnerships
In 2010, Fair Trade USA convened a Multi-Stakeholder Group of buyers, suppliers, auditors, trainers, NGOs, and Fair Trade producers to guide pilot implementation of certification standards through the end of 2012. Fair Trade USA hosted and facilitated two quarterly meetings and the first round of subcommittee meetings focused on income, empowerment, sourcing, and communications. Members of the Multi-Stakeholder Group include:
• North-based NGOs: Jackie DeCarlo, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Fair Trade; Patricia Jurewicz, As You Sow / Responsible Sourcing Network; and Audrey Seagraves, World of Good Development Organization
• South-based NGOs: Homero Fuentes, Coverco; and Dr. Aqueel Khan, Association For Stimulating Know How (ASK) India
• Companies: Bena Burda, Maggie’s Organics/Clean Clothes, Inc.; Joe Falcone, Counter Sourcing ; Scott Leonard, Indigenous Designs; and Doug Cahn, The Cahn Group, LLC and Clear Voice
• Suppliers: Rajat Jaipuria, Rajlakshmi Cotton Mills Ltd. (RCML); and Chid Liberty, Liberian Women’s Sewing Project
• Cotton Producers: Ashutosh P. Deshpande, Chetna Organic Program (India)
• Fair Trade USA: Heather Franzese and Tierra Del Forte
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Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
$100,000‐250,000
Explain your selections
Fair Trade USA is a mixed revenue model. Approximately 70 percent of our income comes from Fair Trade certification fees from U.S. businesses and approximately 30 percent comes from individual donations and foundation grants.
This project is done in partnership with the NGOs and businesses listed above and will depend on support from U.S. consumers.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
Fair Trade USA and its project partners intend to strengthen this project over the next three years through rigorous evaluation and improvement of the new standards for Fair Trade Certified apparel.
Fair Trade USA will also expand the network of countries, factories, and project partners involved with this initiative.
Challenges
Which barriers to employment does your innovation address?
Please select up to three in order of relevancy to your project.
PRIMARY
Restricted access to new markets
SECONDARY
Lack of efficiency
TERTIARY
Lack of skills/training
Please describe how your innovation specifically tackles the barriers listed above.
Fair Trade USA strengthens the ability of farmers, agricultural cooperatives and associations to function effectively and efficiently by integrating technical assistance and capacity building support into every project or program. Fair Trade leverages its connections along the entire supply chain to create more efficient links between producer and end markets, empowering smallholder producers to increase incomes through greater and more sustainable access to the Fair Trade market worldwide.
Are you trying to scale your organization or initiative?
If yes, please check up to three potential pathways in order of relevancy to you.
PRIMARY
Grown geographic reach: Within host country
SECONDARY
Grown geographic reach: Multi-country
TERTIARY
Grown geographic reach: Global
Please describe which of your growth activities are current or planned for the immediate future.
Fair Trade USA is establishing Fair Trade Certified garments in India. If Fair Trade can expand Fair Trade apparel worldwide, it is pivotal that it first succeeds in India.
Do you collaborate with any of the following: (Check all that apply)
NGOs/Nonprofits, For profit companies.
If yes, how have these collaborations helped your innovation to succeed?
Fair Trade USA launched its Apparel and Linen Products Program with 3 certified organic cotton producing factories in India, Liberia and Costa Rica, and with a dozen pioneering brands. Brands include:
• Liberty & Justice (San Francisco)
• HAE Now (El Sobrante, CA)
• Maggie’s Organics (Ypsilanti, MI)
• PrAna (Vista, CA)
• Indigenous Designs (Santa Rosa, CA)
• Marigold Fair Trade (Seattle, WA)
Fair Trade USA conducted auditor training in Mumbai, India in December 2010 in partnership with Social Accountability International (SAI) and their monitoring partners. Fair Trade has effectively linked producers to Fair Trade brands.
 | 100 weeks ago James Solada updated this Competition Entry. |
| 100 weeks ago James Solada updated this Competition Entry. |
| 100 weeks ago James Solada submitted this idea. |
