Fair Trade Mission and Practices

Our Mission

Our mission is to help generate fair and sustainable trading opportunities for disadvantaged artisans in Ecuador and contribute to easing local poverty, while offering fabulous handmade products to our customers.

Fair Trade Values
Fair Trade is a growing international movement which promotes fair living wages to producers in developing countries. Fair Trade is not charity; it is about paying artisans a fair price for their hard work, which is of course how all trade should be!

The current global trading system ("Free Trade") with its emphasis on maximizing profits is shockingly unjust - it favors multinational corporations at the expense of local communities and the environment. Many products being sold in the Western World are produced by exploiting people in developing countries. We believe that Fair Trade offers a viable alternative for consumers - it puts people ahead of profits as we work together towards a more humane and just world.

Fair Trade purchases are a win-win situation for everyone. Consumers get beautifully handmade product, while artisans receive a fair price and are given opportunities to break the cycle of poverty, put their children through school and maintain their cultural identity and dignity.

Artisans in the Andes is not a member of the Fair Trade Federation as we are a new company and not yet eligible. However, we are a part of the global fair trade movement, building equitable and sustainable trading partnerships and creating opportunities to alleviate poverty. Our choices are made with concern for the well-being of people and the environment. We work to create opportunity so that our craftsmen and artisans may have viable economic options to meet their own needs. We engage in trading practices that honor the value of labor and dignity of all people.

Fair Trade Federation members are required to demonstrate compliance with the Nine Principles of Membership. We are not yet evaluated on these Principles, but we have been working at implementing them from the beginning of our operations. We live and work in Ecuador, and meet in the homes and workshops of our artisans, they are our friends and our family. We know first hand what are their economic situations and needs.

Our Principles:

Create opportunities for economically and socially marginalized producers. We strive to alleviate poverty.
Develop transparent and accountable relationships. We share information freely with artisans, other fair traders and consumers. We visit in person and we tell artisans’ stories. We work directly with artisans to help them understand their profit margins.
Build capacity. We take on new artisans slowly because once we add them, we want to stay with them and provide them a sustainable income.
Promote fair trade. We are fully committed to fair trade. We blog, network and advise others.
Pay promptly and fairly. We pay at least 50% in advance with orders, and the balance when we pick up the order.
Support safe and empowering working conditions. We work with cooperatives, individuals and families that have a significant say in their own pay and conditions – no factories or sweatshops. We see the work conditions of each artisan through personal visits.
Ensure the rights of children. Children have the right to security, education and play. We follow the lead of the UN convention on the rights of children and all local, regional and national child labor laws. We participate in education scholarships for local children of the poorest families.
Cultivate environmental stewardship. This includes reducing use, recycling, renewing, reusing and reclaiming resources. We use no endangered materials. We sell a variety of products created from sustainable seeds and nuts from the Amazon Rainforest.
Respect cultural identity. Some products support long-term cultural traditions or methods. Even with new products and processes, we support community standards and heritages.

Are we certified?

No. Fairtrade certification and pricing were designed for commodity products. It is hard to adapt the Fairtrade model of standardised minimum pricing to crafts and other products made by small-scale artisans, which are unique, made of varied materials and have highly varied production processes and costs.

Continue

Bestsellers