Fairtrade Announces Two New Initiatives Supported by European Union

Fairtrade International is pleased to announce two new initiatives that will promote sustainable consumption and production in Europe and Asia.

Together, the European Union-funded projects will expand their engagement with a diverse array of consumers and producers, politicians and policy makers, and businesses and institutions during the next few years.

Advancing sustainable consumption and production in Europe

Fairtrade International, together with 21 implementing partners – including eight National Fairtrade Organizations (Czech Republic & Slovakia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, UK), the Fair Trade Advocacy Office, World Fair Trade Organization and eight of its members, and Fashion Revolution – secured €5.8 million funding from the European Union to implement a three-year project entitled Trade Fair – Live Fair.

The project centres on SDG12, the UN Sustainable Development Goal concerning sustainable consumption and production. Activities include awareness raising, advocacy, research, private sector engagement and capacity building. The project aims to influence 290,000 EU citizens, 70 MEPs, 25 local authorities, 4000 local, national and EU policy makers, and 2000 companies.

“This EC grant will provide financial support to more than 20 Fair Trade movement organisations across Europe. The project aims at better coordinating advocacy and public mobilisation work, using joint evidence-based research. It should also help build our collective capacities to advocate for Fair Trade and more sustainable consumption and production patterns,” said Sergi Corbalan, Director of the Fair Trade Advocacy Office.

Expanding reach in India, new work in Bhutan and Indonesia

Fairtrade International also secured a European Commission grant of €1 million to support Fairtrade’s market expansion in India. Together with Fairtrade India, the Bhutan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Fairtrade Germany and Max Havelaar France, the four-year project aims to increase Indian urban consumers’ understanding of and engagement with the concept of sustainability – particularly related to food and clothing.

The project is targeting 400,000 urban consumers, 50 schools, two universities and five business schools, 10 businesses (with the Fairtrade@Work programme), four towns and 15 Small Producer Organizations representing 6,800 farmers in Bhutan, India and Indonesia.

“This is a potential game changer for Fairtrade activities in India! The project is in complete alignment with our work as a Fairtrade Marketing Organization and provides some much needed resources to scale up our work done in the past four years of building a Fairtrade sustainable consumption and production eco-system in India,” said Abhishek Jani, Chief Executive Officer of Fairtrade India.

“We are excited about developing new Fairtrade supply chains from India but also introducing Fairtrade in new origins like Bhutan and developing new origin cocoa supply chains from Indonesia. The project would also help us achieve some key objectives of the Fairtrade strategy 2016-2020 of developing new markets for producers in India and also working more closely as a system in collaboration with Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Asia Pacific Producer Network, Fairtrade Germany and Max Havelaar France,” Jani added.

Links

https://www.fairtrade.net

http://www.fairtrade-advocacy.org/

https://www.fairtrade.at/fairtradework.html

http://fairtradeindia.org/

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