May 14th: World Fair Trade Day 2011!

From May 14th until the 28th, Fair Trade Lebanon is celebrating the Fair Trade Fortnight in Lebanon. This event, of international dimension, revolves around the World Fair Trade Day on the 12th of May and aims to raise awareness for Fair Trade as an alternative trading system that respects people and the environment.

During our fifteen days of campaign, table mats about fair trade will be placed in 12 different restaurants which also agreed to include some of Fair Trade Lebanon’s products into their menus!

In addition to that, and to gather more people into this global celebration, FTL will hold a stand at the Garden Show Spring Festival taking place at the Hippodrome of Beirut from May 24th to 28th, from 4 to 10 PM.

Our aim is to let the voice of fair trade be heard and encourage people to support and join this dynamic by choosing to put the interest of our small producers above all.

This event is supported by the French Embassy in Lebanon.

FTL is live from Lille, France

Day One, 8th of May: The race, communication, work and fun are all ON !

Our stand at the French National Fair Trade Forum

Product tasting: Almonds, grilled wheat, zaatar & olive oil, Fleur de Sel & Capers

More pics of us wearing traditional Tarbouch and info coming up!!

The First Arab Fair Trade Forum

We are gathered here in Amman, Jordan, from the 5th until the 7th of December, under the theme of “Positioning the Arab Region on the World’s Fair Trade Map”. The goal of this forum is for the current Arab fair trade actors to get to know each other, share experiences and develop a solid regional strategy that would allow us to have a say and an influence on an international scale.

Right now there is no real presence of an Arab movement that operates as a solid core in the trading system.
Hence, we have the intention of implementing a strategy that will hopefully reinforce a potential regional coordination.

The first day of the forum mainly consisted in presenting several show cases: Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.
We are actually benefiting from an exchange of expertise, realizing that each experience has a unique background and important challenges. In Palestine for instance, producers encounter unlimited obstacles due to the lack of sales, the pressure in their country, the export complexity etc.
Jordan, on the other hand, chose two specific fields of Fair Trade, Tourism and Handicrafts. As for Fair Trade Egypt, a beautiful variety of handicrafts is being supported and marketed, for almost 11 years now!
Benoit Berger and I have presented the Lebanese show case and set forth our activities in Fair Trade Lebanon. We decided to introduce a facet of the Lebanese reality while mentioning the unfortunate decline of the agriculture sector and its uneven national development strategy.

The aim is to take all of these challenges and turn them into opportunities. How can the Arab network be developed in order to offer more than just a title? How can our weaknesses become a field of experiment and power?

Monday is a crucial day in the establishment of the AFTN (Arab Fair Trade Network) and the finalization of the action plan and responsibilities.