Enacting a fair trade model that values the farmers, consumers, and the environment, Equal Exchange is an inspiring example of success based on collaboration and honest intentions to do good. Equal Exchange is a co-operative that accurately calls itself a social change organization. It has been built as a company that is controlled by the employees. By collaborating with worker co-operatives around the globe, the organization is successfully providing high quality food to the customer. Additionally, it is also proactively educating consumers about trade issues affecting the farmers bringing positive social change in the community.
In consonance with its name of Triodos or ‘three way’, Triodos Bank has built its business model on the three pillars of people, planet and profits. The belief of the bank is simple and its mission is lucid - it finances companies, institutions and projects that add cultural value and benefit people and environment with the support of depositors and investors who wish to encourage social responsibility and a sustainable society.
Food, Fun and Social Activism - the blinking words flashing across the website of White Dog cafe more than sum up its philosophy- they define the life spirit flowing through the café’s business model. The café does not simply offer its award-winning cuisine but does this with social consciousness through various activities and events organized throughout the year. Through its initiatives to serve the customer, community, earth and each other, the café is a model for small community businesses as levers for social change.
Building self esteem, securing sustainable future, and creating abundance through the force of business is what defines Economic Development Imports (EDImports). The organization has been instrumental in leveraging the skills of women in the developing world to produce native products that could be sold in the developing world, thereby reducing poverty, insecurity and threat.
What makes this different is the scale of the initiative that reaches out to multitude of artisans in the most remote parts of East and West Africa. By being a conduit to the beautiful products made by these women and their huge demand in the markets in the developed world, EDImports has provided the required impetus to pull the artisans and their families out of marginal socioeconomic conditions.
‘Sekem’ means vitality from the sun, the ripples of which have touched people, environment and community in multitude of ways. It is an initiative in Egypt with a vision of sustainable development through economic, social and cultural progress. Operating via an umbrella organization called Sekem Holding, products like natural pharmaceuticals, organic food, and organic textiles are manufactured in a hope to heal the earth and spread prosperity in the country.
Starbucks Coffee Company’s C.A.F.E (Coffee and Farmer Equity) Practices program ensures that Starbucks sources sustainably grown and processed coffee by evaluating the economic, social and environmental aspects of coffee growing along the supply chain. In 2005, Starbucks purchased 76.8 million pounds of coffee from the C.A.F.E Practice providers, which represents 24.6% of all coffee purchased by the company. By improving the environment, economy, and the educational and health services within local communities, Starbucks creates stability for its farmers and, in turn, for the company, according to Cindy Hoots, Senior Specialist at Starbucks in the Corporate Responsibility Office.
Newman’s Own Organics is an organic food manufacturer that focuses on providing the kinds of products people loved as kids, but takes them one step further by using the highest quality of available organic ingredients. Nell Newman, daughter of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, along with Peter Meehan founded Newman’s Own Organics in 1993. Newman’s Organics has been an innovator of organic food products since its conception, concentrating on developing products with wide consumer appeal, such as pretzels, cookies and popcorn. According to Nell Newman, “Some people have a narrow definition of organic. They see it as heavy and tasteless, being forced to change your eating habits. No way! This is great food that is ultimately better for the environment long, long term.”
Equal Exchange is a successful, growing, for-profit, employee-owned, specialty foods company that has helped to pioneer the “Fair Trade” model that improves the market access, income, and commercial opportunities for small-scale farmers in developing countries. In the traditional coffee supply chain, small-scale farmers sell their crop to a chain of intermediaries who eventually export the coffee. Under this arrangement the individual farmers have almost no control; few economic options; carry out only the very least profitable link in the value chain; and receive just a small amount of the export price – which itself is usually too low to provide more than a poverty-level income.
In contrast to conventional importing practices Equal Exchange deals directly with democratically run farmer cooperatives in Africa, Asia and South America, and buys their coffee, and other crops, at a guaranteed above-market price. In addition, Equal Exchange works with socially responsible financial institutions in the U.K. and U.S. to provide affordable loans to cooperatives that might otherwise lack access to credit. These Fair Trade practices increase the incomes of the economically disadvantaged growers; helps them to invest in their operations; and fosters broad-based, stable economic growth in rural communities. Fair Trade also helps to foster equality and democracy in countries where corruption is often a problem.
Ten Thousand Villages (TTV) provides vital, fair income to Third World artists and crafts people by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories in North America. It is a nonprofit, self-supporting alternative trading organization (ATO) - a non-governmental organization designed to benefit artisans, not to maximize profits. They market products from handicraft and agricultural organizations based in low-income countries. They provide consumers around the world with products that have been fairly purchased from sustainable sources. ATOs put fair trade into practice and campaigns for more equitable terms of trade for artisans from low-income countries
TTV is a nonprofit fair trade program of Mennonite Central Committee, a relief, service and peace agency of the North American Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches. To TTV, each village in the world represents a unique, distinctive people... offering extraordinary products born of their rich cultures and traditions.
Over the past 15 years, Groupe DANONE has moved into a number of emerging markets, including China, Indonesia, India, North Africa, and South Africa. In all of these countries, the sale of high quality food products is held back by the low purchasing power of consumers. Today Asia, Latin America and the Africa/Middle East region account for no less than 24% of group sales. To make its products accessible to low-income consumers, the company launched DANONE's Affordability Initiative. Through this Initiative it has developed products with significantly enhanced nutritional value that meets local needs at an affordable price, without compromising high standards for quality and food safety.
Edun is a socially conscious clothing company created by Ali Hewson and her rock star husband, U2's Bono, with New York clothing designer Rogan Gregory. Launched in spring 2005, the company aims to bring the issue of sustainable employment to the world of high fashion. EDUN was born as an alternative approach to creating beautiful clothes in a respectful, sustainable manner and to shift the focus away from aid to trade in the developing world, particularly Africa.
As the oldest and largest for-profit Fair Trade company in the U.S., Equal Exchange trades directly with 28 democratically run farmer co-ops located in 14 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Its mission is to build long-term partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relations between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate the viability of worker cooperatives and Fair Trade. They strive to build social and economic justice through the marketplace.
Whole Foods is the largest organic and natural foods grocer in the United States. Clearing $188 million in profits over the past two years, it has beaten Wal-Mart in overall and comparable store sales growth, while profoundly impacting how Americans eat. The company also prides itself on treating employees in a fair and equitable manner and preventing upper management salaries from skyrocketing out of control. Financial data is released to employees, to help them understand how the company is doing and keep the working environment transparent. Executive pay is limited to 14 times the average frontline worker, while frontline employees qualify for stock options, profit sharing, health insurance for full time employees, and paid time off for volunteer work.
The Greyston Bakery, a for-profit business, incorporates the positive societal agenda into its core business practice via hiring individuals “chronically unemployed” due to lack of skills and education, as well as histories of homelessness, drug addiction and incarceration. Furthermore, the bakery sustains the work of its non-profit affiliate, Greyston Mandela. With an overriding mission to reduce human suffering, both organizations are focused on sustainability, community development and empowerment.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is one of the top producers of double certified – organic and fair trade - coffee. As such, the company is uniquely positioned to promote ecological restoration while at the same time participating in poverty alleviation. To assure the overall successes of the double certified product like, every year Green Mountain Coffee Roasters takes its employees, customers, and partners for a "trip to the origin". To date, about 20% of the company has taken the trip to learn about the intricate interdependencies of all coffee production processes, "from tree to cup," and to engage with partners at the origins in order to create new mutually beneficial policies, methods, and approaches to coffee production.
