Collaboration with Carrefour Supermarket!

[texte français ci-dessous]

Fair Trade Lebanon and Terroirs du Liban (TDL) have launched a collaboration with Carrefour supermarket, located in Hazmieh, in the capital of Beirut, through the animation of a live Saj station (traditional Lebanese bread, served with cheese, zaatar and other fillings) while also selling the whole range of TDL products.

The Saj stand is located next to Carrefour’s bakery and is animated by cooperatives’ women who underwent the food training sessions offered within the UN Women project.

Through this collaboration and within the framework of the “Placement Program” of the project, these women were hired by Fair Trade and Tourism Lebanon (FTTL) to put into practice their knowledge and further develop their expertise.

Live saj preparation hours are from 9 AM until 8 PM, throughout the week.
This collaboration will last until the end of December 2016 with a chance of extension.

Support this great development initiative and make sure to pass by and taste their exquisite Saj preparations! 

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Fair Trade Lebanon et Terroirs du Liban (TDL) ont lancé une collaboration avec le supermarché Carrefour, situé à Hazmieh, dans la capitale de Beyrouth, et ce en animant un stand de préparation sur place de Saj (pain libanais traditionnel, servi avec du fromage, du zaatar et autres garnitures) ainsi qu’en proposant à la vente la gamme entière des produits TDL.
Le stand de Saj est situé à côté de la boulangerie de Carrefour ; Il est animé par les femmes des coopératives ayant participées aux sessions de formations culinaires offertes au sein du projet UN WOMEN.
Grace à cette collaboration et toujours dans le cadre du projet, elles ont été embauchées par Fair Trade and Tourism Lebanon (FTTL) en tant que stagiaires dans le but de leur offrir un débouché de travail, de mettre en pratique leurs connaissances et de développer leur expertise.
 

Les horaires de préparation de Saj sont de 9h à 20h, courant toute la semaine.
Cette collaboration aura lieu jusqu’à la fin du mois de Décembre 2016 avec une chance de prolongation.
Soutenez cette belle initiative de développement et ne manquez pas de passer pour déguster leur préparation exquise de Saj !
 

Interesting Numbers

Fairtrade = 80 million consumers
Fairtrade = 8 million beneficiaries
Fairtrade = Turnover of € 3 billion (2010)
Fairtrade = Represents 0.02% of world trade ... with an average annual growth of 20% per year.

FTL's Certification

FTL received, on Saturday, a certification that testifies its participation to the Beirut Cooking Festival. It was one of the best experience FTL has ever had! Thank you all for your support and your help! See you on the next event.

Join us at the Beirut Cooking Festival

Our pictures at the exhibition "Le Verger de Marie"!

First FTL Sales !

21 FTL products had been sold in one month at "Maison de l'Artisan"-Ain El Mreysseh!!

Thank you for buying our products at TSC branches!

Our products are available since May 2012 in TSC supermarkets: Baabda, Dora, Downtown, Verdun & Jnah.

You can also find our product selection in Caliprix (Jounieh Highway) and ASSAHA (Mar Takla Hazmieh).

Black Gold: coffee, a very tough business

This trailer puts forward the coffee business and its hardships on producers; To sum it up, for a 3$ cup of coffee, producers only earn 3 cents.
Let's make trade fair!

Conférence débat animée par M. Philippe Adaime: les Jeudis du MEREF

Le Jeudi 22 Mars 2012 :

M. Philippe Adaime, trésorier administrateur de Fair Trade Lebanon, a animé une conférence débat sur le thème "le commerce équitable au Liban" dans le cadre des Jeudis du MEREF (le Mouvement des Entreprises et Représentations Economiques Françaises au Liban).

La conférence a été suivie d'une dégustation des produits de Fair Trade Lebanon: vin rouge équitable, confitures, sirops, mana'ishs...

Ces conférences ont lieu une fois par mois à l'université de l'ESA!

"How can trade be fair?"

by Eliot Stempf from the TimeOut Beirut magazine !

‘When we translate the phrase “fair trade” in Arabic for farmers, they sometimes laugh! “How can trade be fair? In Lebanon, trade is always unfair. If you are not the winner, you are the loser.” So Benoit Berger, Director of Projects for the organization Fair Trade Lebanon (FTL), illustrated one of the several fundamental challenges that fair trade foods face in Lebanon. Not even local Lebanese producers – those who could stand to benefit the most from a market for Lebanese fair trade foods – necessarily get the idea.

Fair Trade Lebanon began out of a desire to alleviate the impovershed circumstances of the south and the many villages caught in conflicts over the Lebanese- Israeli border. International NGOs were distributing goods, but not ways to sustain growth. Studies conducted by founders Philippe Adaime, Samir Abdelmalak, Gabriel Debbane, Jad Bitar and Joanne Karkour back in 2003 revealed a tremendous regional potential for food processing. Lebanon might lack the capacity or climate for cash crops, but its people have the experience in processing and preserving what’s available at hand. Further study revealed that the best way to market locally produced foods in Europe and North America was via a fair trade label. ‘Fair trade’ came to Lebanon not as a foreign ethos, but as a home-grown strategy to reinvigorate the countryside.

The purpose of the organisation is straightforward: help local producers using traditional Lebanese methods to find new markets and receive a fair salary for their efforts. ‘We don’t want to go out and teach people to make fig jam; we want to identify people who already know, and help them adapt it to the modern market’, said Berger. This means helping to control producers’ costs, telling producers how to alter their methods to meet some international standards, providing packaging and discovering buyers. FTL follows a product from the fields in Baalbek to store shelves in Europe.

A family producing jam in the south, for instance, faces several problems in trying to sell their product in the Beirut market. First is just finding a shop that’ll buy. Second is remuneration. According to Firas Hamdan, Merchandising Manager for TSC supermarkets, local producers receive payment between 45 and 60 days after delivery. For the small producer, the time that passes from the initial capital they put into creating the product – whether it’s jam, olive oil or pickles – to receiving their earnings is oftentimes prohibitive. And some retailers are unscrupulous: ‘We know stores,’ notes Randa El Chemali, Marketing Coordinator for FTL, ‘that wait until the product is sold to pay back the producer... People don’t have easy transport to Beirut; they can’t do the financial follow-up that’s necessary.’ Third, local products are more expensive, by 15-20% in TSC stores.

Since its inception in 2006, FTL has grown alongside the very Lebanese producers it has helped to support. It’s developed with all the trimmings of a homegrown movement – both the good and bad. ‘Little by little we acquired experience, for instance, on packaging,’ Berger stated. ‘Olive oil bottles with a plastic cap can’t be exported to Europe; the European partner just says “no, we can’t sell this.” Then there’s new regulations for tea bags – you can’t use staples.’ It took time just to acquire the international credibility necessary just to market products abroad as fair trade. ‘We’ve just become a member of the World Fair Trade Organization, which took us a long time. When we first emailed them, they asked, “who are you?’”

FTL sees opportunities not just internationally, but locally as well. ‘When people taste our pomegranate molasses, they say, “Oh! It’s just like my grandmother would make!’” says Benoit. TSC Signature Downtown already carries local products, Hamdan notes. When asked about their prospects, he was adamant: ‘There’s a taste and quality difference between the commercial and homemade. We’re all Lebanese. We’ve lived in a traditional culture. That’s why people will buy these products.

Article is online here.

Our partnership with FairTrade International !

Samir Abdelmalak, president of FTL and Chiraz Skhiri FLO's Regional Coordinator for Middle East & North Africa

Press release by Fairtrade International (FLO)

28 February 2012

We are proud to announce a new partnership with Fair Trade Lebanon, which will work towards advancing Lebanese farming communities and spreading Fairtrade to new consumers and producers. It makes Lebanon the 64th producer country on the Fairtrade map.

Lebanon’s soil is rich in nutrients and is highly cultivatable. But poor farming practices have led to soil erosion and water pollution. The Lebanese Civil War and the conflict with Israel have taken their toll and poverty is rife.

A group of Lebanese set up Fair Trade Lebanon (FTL) in 2006 to translate the country’s agricultural potential into real income for small farmers and to tackle the consequences of the conflict. Thanks to Fair Trade Lebanon’s work, many cooperatives have already started selling their products abroad in fair trade outlets. From 2006 to 2010, FTL supported women co-ops in exporting goods worth US $600,000.

Through the new partnership, Lebanese small producer groups are becoming Fairtrade certified, meaning they can sell their products with the FAIRTRADE Mark and access more international markets. The partnership will also provide the farmers with more coordinated support and training.

“Les Coteaux d’Heliopolis” became Fairtrade certified last December. The cooperative of grape-growers has 250 members from 11 villages and provides seasonal employment opportunities to over 400 families in the North Bekaa region. During the civil war many farmers in the region started growing cannabis and drug-trafficking was rife. Even when the government banned these crops farmers had no viable alternative, leading to a mass exodus. By founding the cooperative, farmers have switched to wine grapes and have started returning to the land and earning a living again.

Over the past two years Fairtrade International’s Regional Coordinator of Middle East and North Africa, Chiraz Skhiri, has visited Lebanon several times and worked closely with FTL to help producers understand Fairtrade and get certified.

“I am thrilled about this partnership,” said Chiraz. “We’ve been working towards this moment for years and it is going to open a lot of doors in the region. Fair Trade Lebanon is doing such good work; it is great that we can work together to improve the lives of farmers in Lebanon, and to promote Fairtrade to local consumers.”

FTL and Fairtrade International are working to help other groups get Fairtrade certified including farmers of herbs & spices, apricots, cherries, pomegranates, almonds and olive oil. We are also planning activities to raise consumer awareness of Fairtrade in Lebanon, such as the Fairtrade Breakfast for World Fair Trade Day on 12 May in Beirut.

The full press release is online on FLO's website here.

Our 10 Fair Trade Principles

Principle One: Creating Opportunities for Economically Disadvantaged Producers
Principle Two: Transparency and Accountability
Principle Three: Fair Trading Practices
Principle Four: Payment of a Fair Price
Principle Five: Ensuring no Child Labour and Forced Labour
Principle Six: Commitment to Non Discrimination, Gender Equity and Freedom of Association
Principle Seven: Ensuring Good Working Conditions
Principle Eight: Providing Capacity Building
Principle Nine: Promoting Fair Trade
Principle Ten: Respect for the Environment

For more information about Fair Trade click on this link for French text, and on >this one for English.

Fair Trade for Women Producers...Portraits of Hope and Determination

The Women’s Economic Empowerment project was launched in 2009 and is funded by the MDG3 Global Fund by the Government of the Netherlands. Through the project, WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing) and its partners are advocating for the needs of informal workers, especially women. The project seeks to promote the voice, visibility and validity of working poor women across different countries, sectors and issues in the informal economy. As part of this project, WIEGO’s Global Trade Programme, in partnership with leading Fair Trade organizations in seven countries, initiated Fair Trade for Women Producers with a focus on documenting, analyzing and disseminating key success factors of fair trade by involving women producers in all stages of development.


They have coordinated and organized their 2 year research with several country networks: In India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Mexico, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In each country, they have chosen a few women groups and have followed them in their daily life, searching for information and common trends. The groups were given video and digital cameras and were asked to be their own messengers, so they began to interview themselves and use their own words to tell their unique stories.

I personally watched in Kenya the series of small documentaries that WIEGO produced for each country...I enjoyed each second of them and realized that sometimes we could be extremely ungrateful in regard to what we have, or what we think we don't have. I was struck by the courage and the motivation of these women struggling to put food on the table and make a decent living for themselves and their families. Some of them are marginalized by their respective societies because they happen to be widows or with special needs...These women producers chose to fight against their tremendous poverty and oppression, by organizing themselves and increasing their power and performance as a group.

The below videos would give you a broader vision of what Fair Trade or Women Producers really represents:

As stated by WIEGO... these are "portraits of hope and determination".

Bijaipur, India: part I

Bijaipur, India: part II

All the documentaries and analysis are available on the blog of Fair Trade for Women Producers (under the country pages), click here to access the home page.

Thank you Elaine, Carole and Sofia for the beautiful work...and a bigger thanks to all these noble ladies who, by speaking out, remind us that life is really what you make of it...

Be Inspired Before you Expire!

If you are a dreamer, a believer, a person looking for a meaning to your actions, then it's never too late to BE INSPIRED and to go for it.

The WFTO 11th biennial conference was launched with the theme of:
WFTO: A global partnership for a common good.

...What is a common good? It is the present, it is us, working together hand in hand and putting the interest of small producers in our hearts and minds, in order to walk towards the ultimate goal of reaching a fairer and more transparent trading system.

Despite the global shaky economy that affects our understanding of the "common good", we all gathered here in Mombasa to reaffirm the foundations, the principles and the beauty of an organization uniting more than 700 Fair Trade actors worldwide.

This global conference, of just a few days, was a great opportunity to share expertise and stories! I've met artisans from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Swaziland...as well as Asian participants from India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Nepal and the list goes on.

I can't describe the thrill that sprinkles in ones heart in such a rich gathering, but I can try and give you a small idea by quoting this sentence:

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" -Eleanor Roosevelt.

Fair Trade Lebanon's video presented to the WFTO

The World Fair Trade Organization has asked all of its members and supporters to produce a 60 second video about their work, activities, producers or any other interesting topic related to fair trade...

The video we produced is about Walid, a young farmer from Deir el Ahmar, who has replaced his cannabis plants with vineyards...Enjoy his testimony...

Fair Trade Lebanon at Balamand University

Dear Students and Advocates,

Today FTL was be present at the University of Balamand to give a conference about the concept of Fair Trade, its opportunities and challenges. The event was organized by the university's Interactive student Club, which we deeply thank for their interest, motivation, and communication work.

If you are a student reading this blog and wish to launch the same event at your own university, then Fair Trade Lebanon would be more than glad to hear from you!

Visit of the French Ambassador to Ain Ebel

Today, we were honored by the visit of His Excellency the Ambassador of France in Lebanon Mr Denis Pietton, to our partner Food-Processing Cooperative of Ain Ebel. The program involved the presentation of the cooperative whose rehabilitation has been supported by the Social Fund for Development of the French Embassy in partnership with Fair Trade Lebanon.

Marathon 2010: We did it!

Go Fair Trade!

Good Job, 10 km in about 1h20!

Pictures of FTL's catering!