In 1994, I participated for the third time in what was called the “North American Alternative Trading Organizations” (NAATO) conference at Georgetown University in Washington DC . I was part of an international group of individuals working on the concept of certification, a system to ensure the adherance by companies to certain basic principles such as fair prices, respect for workers’ rights, care for the earth, the trade not charity concept, and encouraging consumer responsibility.
At the 1994 conference we formally decided to form the Fair Trade Federation. Being an outspoken Latin American in the crowd, I was asked to run for the first board of directors and was elected to be Vice-President. Then from 1995 to 1997 I worked for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s (IATP) Fair Trade program. Under this program, we created Peace Coffee and introduced the Transfair Fair Trade Label to the United States. The interim board of directors later hired business consultant Paul Rice, to do market research and develop a business plan for the new initiative. Paul was later hired as the Executive Director of the U.S. branch of Transfair, the fair trade labelling arm of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International. The rest is history as you can read on their website.
What prompted me to write about this issue was this morning’s report by Sea Stachura, a Minnesota Read the rest of this entry »


