Fair Trade Alliance Building Program: ‘Sustainable Growth Through Fair Trade Approaches’

Venue: Hotel Central Park, Gwalior
(Feb 15, 2012)

Fair Trade Forum-India and SETU Consortium together organized a Fair Trade Alliance Building Program on 15th Feb 2012 at Hotel Central Park in Gwalior. The theme of the program was “Sustainable Growth Through Fair Trade Approaches”.

The basic objectives of this program were to promote Fair Trade in India & create visibility of Fair Trade, to develop networking & partnerships, market for the members associated with craft & food trades and strategies on using Fair Trade approaches for achieving Sustainable Growth.

The program provided an opportunity for a dialogue to understand the similar initiatives and explore a common platform to go forward together where all the like-minded organizations, NGOs, Corporate, Govt. officials & Educationists can take part and identify some potential alliance for near future. They also got opportunity to share about their own initiatives & experiences on a national platform.

To achieve the objectives, eminent persons & intelligentsias, key people who can be important agents of change & policy makers were invited from different spheres such as NGOs (local as well as others), Industries and Corporate, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Chamber of Commerce, Management & Technical Universities, Government Officials, FTF-I officials & members.

The program was divided into three sessions. A kit (including a Jute bag, folder, Journal, pen and important brochures) made by our various artisans groups was provided to all the guests. All of these were handmade & completely sustainable.

The chief guest & Guests of honours for the program included Prof. Dr. P S Bisen, Mr. Sanjay Bindal and Mr. Devendra Chouhan respectively.

The first session began with the keynote address from Mr. SC Mittal (Sectary FTFI), who enlightened the crowd on History of Fair Trade. This was followed by few words from the chief guest.

The next session had the following eminent speakers;

Ms. Rashmi Dhariwal (Founder & CEO SETU)
Dr. Yogesh Upadhaya (HOD, School of Management, Jiwaji University)
Mr. Sanjay Bindal (Plant Head M/s SRF Ltd, President CII, Chairman QCFI )
Dr. Nidhi Deoskar (Associate professor, ITM University)
Mr. O P Yadav (Official, FTFI)

The presentations by these speakers were very useful and motivating on achieving sustainability & implementation of different strategies to achieve the objectives of Fair Trade. They talked out about how comprehensive sustainability for the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid can be achieved by self-sustainable models of Social Enterprises, the viable organizational forms to achieve equitable distributions and about ethical consumerism and the difference between CSR and Fair Trade Practices, yet how they can bring successful results if they go hand in hand.

The session was quite interactive as the participants (from the audience) also shared their views on the subject and suggested some great thoughts on how the youth can be motivated to bring a major change in the social upliftment, how Govt. aid can be utilized for the livelihood generation of people in slums and how grants from NABARD can be utilized for trainings & micro-finance loans, etc.

In the post lunch session, speakers from NGOs mostly took active participation to share their experiences & initiatives about Fair Trade & the workings of their social organizations. They also shared their struggles and positive experiences with the crowd. We learnt that even though these organizations are different yet they could help and cooperate with each other directly or indirectly.

Partnership possibilities for creating marketing opportunities between the present members were explored along with networking between the NGOs for generating livelihood options for their beneficiaries was also created.

In all, it was a successful program which was appreciated by all the participants with requests to organize more such programs in the future.