Dear Gaga, Claudia, Laura, Ilaria! We have only one thing to say...

Listening the voice of producers

Here you can find 7 small interviews to Tomy Vadakkancheril, Director of the
Indian Fair Trade organization ELEMENTS.
Tomy partecipated the last Enlarging Fair training and his contributions have been crucial
to the understanding of Fair Trade from a producer's perspective.

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

European Food Declaration

The European Food Declaration "Towards a healthy, sustainable, fair and mutually supportive Common Agriculture and Food policy" is promoted by a wide group of farmers' organizations, NGOs and environmental groups. All those actors are interested in partecipating at the debate on the future of food and agriculture in Europe. The declaration invites the EU to reflect about the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy in the next years. The Declaration is a tool to foster the public debate on the European food and agricultural policy.

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!

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.

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