23rd January 2015

Fair Trade training

At Hathay Bunano and Pebble we are committed to Fair Trade.   We believe that all trade should be fair trade and that this set of principles is an ideal way to improve the lives of millions in the world and ensure that everyone gets a fair share of the pie.    But Fair Trade by the World Fair Trade Organisation is a very in-depth process with many requirements and indicators and its very difficult to fully and correctly understand unless you have been through a workshop conducted by an experienced trainer.   We were delighted to have the assistance of Devasmita Sridhar from India to conduct training for Hathay Bunano in Dhaka last year and wanted to share this very positive experience with other organisations in Bangladesh who were interested in WFTO membership and learning more about Fair Trade.

So we organised and sponsored a workshop and advertised it throughout our networks and on social media and five organisations signed up to attend.

Image:   the flyer advertising the Fair Trade training

In fact we kept the entrance to five organisations only and requested each organisation to send 2 participants so that these organisations could really have depth of knowledge on the principles and the indicators.    The training lasted for 4 days from 17th – 20th January 2015 with a certificate giving ceremony on the final afternoon.

Image:   participants working hard at the exercises

The feedback from the participants was really excellent.  The aim of the course was to give enough knowledge and answer specific questions about the individual organisations so that all participants would be in a position at the end of the course, to implement fair trade fully in their organisations and also would be able to complete the entry level form for WFTO membership – the SAR.     We were delighted that all the organisations said that they felt that all their questions had been answered and they had learnt so much and that they now felt confident to move forward with an application for membership.

Image:  Baby from Basha Enterprises Ltd receiving her certificate from Samantha Morshed, founder of Hathay Bunano and Pebble

Whilst Hathay Bunano is not a training organisation, we felt really positive being able to spread the knowledge of Fair Trade in Bangladesh and bringing the expert training of Devasmita Sridhar here to help these organisations.    We are delighted to be a part of this community and hope that we will all be able to help each other as we all move forward along the fair trade path.     If we find that there is additional interest in Bangladesh in learning about Fair Trade then we are, of course, happy to help and arrange additional courses.

Image:   Devasmita Sridhar, WFTO trainer and consultant from India, Samantha Morshed, founder HBPS, and all the course participants.

A huge congratulations to all the participants.   Do check out their websites and the wonderful work they are all doing.

Basha Enterprises Ltd, Oasis Transformation Ltd, Golden Dream Development, MCC