In this Issue:

• WFTW Position Paper and last chance to register!
• Tell us about your plans for the WFT Day!
• Workshop on Unfair Trading Practices and Food Waste
• Join the ´Gender in WFTO´workshop during the WFT Week
• Stand up against the new EU organic regulation
• Training on the Guarantee System
• Vote4FairTrade
• Member of the month

And More…!

Agenda

-09-12 April: 2015 Fair Handeln Fair, Germany

-17 April : Day of Peasants Struggle 

-19 April: 2015 Bio Ost Fair in Berlin

-24 April: Fashion Revolution Day 

-09 May: World Fair Trade Day

-10 May: Bio West Fair, Dusseldorf, Germany

-09-24 May : Fair Trade Fortnight 2015, France

-16 May  : Fairpride Festival, France (organized by our member Artisans du Monde)

-23-31 May: 2015 World Fair Trade Week

-12 June : World Day Against Child Labour

Let us know about your events!

Main Articles

WFTW Position Paper and last chance to register! 

Dear members,

The World Fair Trade Week 2015 is quickly approaching and we hope to see many of you during this unique event.

As you know the WFTW will take place during the Expo 2015, whose theme is “Feeding the planet, energy for life”. Bearing it in mind, WFTO-Europe has recently endorsed a  Position Paper that the Italian Fair Trade Movement elaborated on the Expo theme. This paper aims to stress the crucial role that politics and trade play in the fight against food hunger while avoiding any direct antagonisms or polemics with the Expo approach to the topic.

We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that the deadline to register for the WFTO conference is the 30th of April 2015.

WFTO invited expert speakers and professional practitioners from various fields in Fair Trade verification, marketing, advocacy and campaigning, as well as producers, marketers and ex/import traders who will share their experiences and success stories. Read the draft programme here and regularly check this space for the latest version.

On behalf of the WFTO Network, the presidents of WFTO Global and WFTO Europe invite the public to witness the biggest international Fair Trade celebration of the year:

“Many organisations from the Fair Trade supply chain will be attending the WFTO Biennial Conference and other events of the World Fair Trade Week. In addition, experts, activists, students and other visitors are also expected to attend the International Fair Trade Symposium, an international Fair Trade Milano City Exhibition, a Fair Trade fashion show, fair cooking events, to name only a few of the activities planned to take place during the week.” – Rudi Dalvai, WFTO President

“Europe and Italy are very proud to host the biggest event ever organised on Fair Trade. Fair Trade Organisations and world shops, academics and practitioners, cooks and volunteers, traditional and Fair Trade fashion brands – all together to show that a sustainable and fair economy is not a dream but something real across the world. What consumers ask – clean products verified against social and environmental criteria – is now available and trade justice is fully coherent with quality products. Do not miss this opportunity, come!” – Giorgio Dal Fiume, WFTO Europe President.

Please find below the deadlines for the main events and the links to proceed with the registration:

• WFTO Biannual Conference (24-27 of May) – Deadline: 30^th of April 2015.
• The Mohammed Islam Design Award – This is the last months to subscribe for the competition! Deadline: 30^th of April 2015. Please find the Announcement and the Subscription Form.
• Fair Trade Fair “Milano Fair City” from 28^th to 31^th of May will be held at the Fabbrica del Vapore with over 200 stands. Click here to register for a stand. For those just attending and looking for accommodation during those days, click here.
• The Fair Trade International Symposium (FTIS) 2015, from 28^th to 31^st of May, will be dedicated to the theme “Critically Developing the Fair Trade Movement: Trade justice in food, fashion and craft”, in connection with the themes of the Milan EXPO 2015. Registrations open until 7^th of May 2015.

Looking forward to meeting you in Milan!

WFTO-Europe staff

 Tell us about your plans for the WFT Day!

The World Fair Trade Day is celebrated on 9 May and we would be delighted to know about your plans for this special day! Are you organizing an event or a campaign?  Let us know at communication@wfto-europe.org

Workshop on Unfair Trading Practices and Food Waste 

Photo credit: purefoodlinks.eu 

The last 26^th of March WFTO-Europe participated in the policy workshop with Tristam Stuart on the connection between unfair trading practices (UTPs) and food waste co-organised by FTAO. Tristam Stuart is a renowned English author and campaigner, who in 2011 won the international environmental Sophie Prize and the “Observer Food Monthly Outstanding Contribution Award” for his ongoing campaign to solve the global food waste scandal. He led the discussion focused on the link between short term changes to previously agreed delivery volumes by the importers of Supermarkets and the food waste created by this unfair trading practice.

In some countries a number of initiatives have started taking place in order to effectively tackle UTPs.

In UK in 2013 an enforcement body, the Grocery Code Adjudicator, was created to regulate the relationships between supermarkets and their first tier suppliers and tackle UTPs within the value chains.

In Spain the government’s response was to create the Food Price Observatory within the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Affairs in order to make markets more transparent.

EC representatives acknowledged that the UTPs – food waste problem has not yet properly been addressed.  A voluntary, industry-led framework, the Supply Chain Initiative, was launched in 2013 to make companies act in respect of 10 best practices. However this initiative is not enough to address the climate of fear that makes producers reluctant to publically denounce UTPs as this might threaten their possibility to find another buyer in this highly concentrated market tier. To read more about the event click here.

FTAO together with WFTO-Europe and other partners and allies is strongly advocating against unfair trading practises in its campaign on Power in Supply Chains. For any further information about the campaign please do not hesitate to contact Peter Möhringer at: moehringer@fairtrade-advocacy.org .

Join the ´Gender in WFTO´ workshop during WFT Week 

Do you care about gender? You certainly do as a fair trader! Then you should be interested to participate to the workshop “Gender in WFTO:  Beyond Principle 6” during next WFTO conference in Milan (Monday May 25^th, 15:30). This workshop will review what has happened in WFTO since the new Principle 6 was approved at Rio in 2013 and what remains to be done. Short presentations will be made on the 2015/16 awareness raising/lobbying campaign on gender and Fair Trade handicrafts (Oxfam-Magasins du Monde, Belgium), as well as the project “Developing Leadership and Business Skills for Informal Women Workers in Fair Trade” (Wiego). There will be plenty of time for discussion on next steps to take us “Beyond Principle 6”.

Stand up against the new EU Organic Regulation

As some of you might already know, on 24 March 2014, the European Commission issued a proposal for a new Organic Regulation.

At WFTO-Europe, together with the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) and many other Fair Trade actors, we are worried about the outcomes of this proposal which is currently being discussed in the European Parliament and the Council.

The Fair Trade movement has serious concerns with regard to the impact for the organic sector and particularly producers and traders who export and import products from third countries into the EU. FTAO is especially concerned by the EC proposal to change the current system of equivalence with EU legislation, by a system requiring “full compliance.” This would have serious negative impact on non-EU producers and EU consumers alike.

That is why FTAO issued a position paper, explaining its views on the EC´s proposal.

In order to help FTAO and the Fair Trade movement to raise awareness on the negative outcomes of this new EC directive, we would like you to do the following:

What do you need to do?

Ask your national governments to support keeping the current system of EU organic rules for imports:

Send a letter to your Agriculture Minister together with the FTAO Position Paper: 

FTAO position paper draft new EU Organic Regulation – November 2014

Template letter for your minister

Please, inform FTAO about your action – contact Sergi Corbalán, FTAO Executive Director at corbalan@fairtrade-advocacy.org

For more information on the EU legislative procedure, identifying stage in the process and main responsible EU decision makers, click here .

Fair Share Platform and Lesson #5: Peer Visit 

Dear members,

In order to give you access to the previous GS Training Sessions, we have created a course on the Fair share Platform, the first global online learning platform dedicated to the Fair Trade actors.

Fair Share is a training and learning platform for entrepreneurs interested in fair trade and socially responsible and sustainable business. This project, initiated amongst others by our member AGICES from Italy, is in its initial phase. This means that some tools might not work properly for the moment. If you encounter any problems with the platform, do not hesitate to contact its administrators.

If you are interested in using the platform and learning from experiences of people engaged in promoting fair trade and social economy, AGICES would be very happy to give you more information. Please, contact Eleonora at eleonoradalzotto@agices.org.

 

What do you need to do to access the previous GS Training Sessions?

1.       Register on the Fair Share platform website.

Using FAIR SHARE is free and very simple: after the registration, a guided tour will show all the available features. You can enroll in the different courses, share your ideas with other users and much more.

 2.       Once registered, go to section ´My courses´ in the top menu

 3.       Search for “Training Session on the new WFTO Guarantee System”

 4.       In ‘Lessons’ section of the Course, you can find the previous training sessions that have been published in last 4 issues of our monthly Newsletter. Remaining sessions will be added to the Fair Share platform once they have been published in our Newsletter.

 

Training session #5: Peer Visit

The Peer Visit is a part of the monitoring system for WFTO members. This 3-part system also includes the Self-Assessment Report (SAR) and the Monitoring Audit.

Peer visits normally take place once every cycle of the WFTO Guarantee System. In the case of high risk or suspected serious non-compliance, the Guarantee System cycle will be shorter and extra visits might be scheduled by the Guarantee System Committee with the Approval by  the Board committee if a serious alert comes in.

Purpose of the Peer visit

The purpose of the Peer Visit is quite different from the Monitoring audit. Peers do not come to inspect the FTO but rather to help their peer to get prepared for the Monitoring Audit. They can highlight the good practices in a FTO and raise issues of concern. Peer visit can be a mutual learning experience.

Peer visits alternate with Monitoring audits. The frequency of peer visits depends on the risk category of the FTO:

What does a Peer visit include?

• Opening meeting of FTO with peers
• Review of documentary records
• Interviews with trading staff, field staff
• Confidential interviews of FTO employees
• Site visit to production areas, selected by the peers
  
• Review of product labelling, sales documentation and communication with clients
• Review / discussion of promotional materials
• Exit meeting to summarise the key points and discuss whether their Self-Assessment
• Report accurately reflects their compliance with the Standard.
• Discuss their improvement plan.

News from the Office

WFTO– Europe is  looking forward to the WFTW, and especially to meeting you all at the AGM and discussing strategic directions of WFTO-Europe! Don´t forget to register for the event!

News from the Board

The minutes of the last Board meeting on 23rd February 2015 are now available on the  Members’section of the website. Please login here in order to access the Board minutes.

The next meetings will be held on the 9th and 21st of April 2015, via Skype.

Vote4FairTrade: Testimonials

VOTE4FT entered its final year in 2015 and WFTO-Europe will try to maximize its efforts in order to contribute to the Project and make sure Fair Trade voice is heard. To keep alive MEPs committment to the project, we invite you to watch the following video  with MEP Ernest Urtasun done by FTAO.