Peau-Ethique and fair trade

Just because Fair Trade Fortnight begins on May 8th doesn't mean I'm going to recycle last year's post...
No, because now fair trade has "supposedly" become commonplace... so the activist in me isn't going to launch into a tirade; instead, I'm going to tell you about our new collaboration in India.

So, why India? Simply because we no longer want to be 100% dependent on one supplier (because, fun fact, two years ago our merchandise from Turkey burned on the ship), so another partnership was essential.

But it wasn't easy, oh no, we had to find the perfect supplier, one who not only did good work but also had convictions... that we had to share!!
Given this, we are going to collaborate with India, but what can we bring to them? Our partner didn't wait for Peau-Ethique to get involved in Fair Trade, and for us, it was a bit new to join an existing sector and participate (at our humble level) in changing their lives there. Indeed, for me, that's what Fair Trade is all about: telling ourselves that what we do here helps them there.

So our new partner is located in Tirupur, in the south of India.
The actions we are putting in place include participating in the smooth running of the school; indeed, parents come to work and children go to school, because while for us this is obvious, in some countries, unfortunately, it's not a given... and also participating in a dispensary. It's true that these actions may seem small, but for them, it's huge. Just sending children to school means (I'm not telling you anything new) dreaming of them having a good situation later and choosing a profession, rather than it being a predetermined fate (a bit like us, in a way).

Generally, we are more committed to actions involving women (we are a bit feminist), but this project really excited us!

Our workshop is FLO cert certified. So this label (I know there are many of them), which I discovered a few years ago (at the very beginning of my activism), is really a good label. It guarantees good fair trade practices in the workshop, but most importantly, it ensures that the artisans decide on the actions taken with the money collected... ultimately, they are in control of their subsidy and together choose which project deserves help or not.

The only downside is that this label is linked to Max Havelaar... but you won't find this logo on our products... Since I said I wouldn't go on a tirade about activism, I'll quickly say that what deeply bothers me about MH is the combination of Fair Trade and mass distribution... but if you're interested, I can talk about it again soon...

So there you have it, now you know about our new partnership. I can tell you that we are working on another sector in Africa, and frankly, it's not easy at all, at all!

Otherwise, Fair Trade Fortnight begins on May 8th... so since we have 15 days to talk about it, I will try to convince (while keeping my calm) some people that Fair Trade is indeed a business, but one with meaning!

++ Fair Trade Fortnight
++ Flo Cert
++ Max Havelaar