Trade Aid – New Zealand’s only fair trade food and craft organisation – is continuing its successful ‘Give Good Gifts’ campaign for the third year, to encourage people to consider the sustainable and ethical implications that come with the presents they buy this Christmas. For nearly 40 years, New Zealand fair trade pioneer, Trade Aid has been fairly trading with some of the poorest parts of the world, supporting livelihoods and helping disadvantaged producers improve health and education in their communities.

Trade Aid’s model is simple: it purchases for a fair price craft and food products from 80 trading partners, and focuses on facilitating positive change through long-term partnerships and sustainable trading relationships. It achieves this through a combination of direct trading, development work, campaigning, and education.

With its origins firmly rooted in the Kiwi principle of fairness, Trade Aid goes beyond the standard requirements of fair trade, repatriating excess trading profits to its producers. These funds are generally used either to strengthen infrastructure or to expand services to members, and in some cases to provide rare and necessary recreation to producers in a collective.

By choosing Trade Aid products over brands operating under conventional trading relationships, shoppers can make a powerful impact through their purchases and what better time of the year to do this than at Christmas.

When Trade Aid purchases food products through fair trade, farmers, growers and workers receive a higher income then they otherwise would. This extra income is critical, as it helps to ensue that they can feed their families, educate their children, and allows their communities to invest in health, education and environmental projects.

Trade Aid’s food manager, Justin Purser regularly visits farmers who produce Trade Aid’s food products. “Customers like it that we are a committed, 100 percent fair trade organisation which has the welfare of producers firmly at the heart of our business model,” he says. “They also like that we are a New Zealand organisation and a pioneer of fair trade – we have been trading this way since 1973.”

This year, it is easier than ever to create the perfect Christmas feast for you and your family. The array of ‘fair’ food from Trade Aid is large; from delicious snacks, to mouth-watering chocolate, delicious coffee and ingredients for the Christmas pudding – you can choose Trade Aid products for every element of your Christmas gorge.

“In Uganda, men traditionally take all the money – and do all the talking!” But not any longer in the Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative in Uganda, one of the origins of Trade Aid’s organic fair trade coffee. Oliva Kishero is a woman coffee farmer and treasurer of the cooperative; who Trade Aid spoke to on a recent visit. “Now we have a committee; we have transparency; we have democracy. Our society empowers women,” she said. But she also explained how unique this is in Uganda. “Here in Uganda, women are not involved in decision-making – but we do all the work.”

Buying fair trade food products this Christmas is so much more than just providing a fair income to hard-working farmers – it’s also about equity for women. Kishero gives a great reason for purchasing fair trade food this Christmas: “Gradually, men are beginning to admire those homes with empowered women.”

Trade Aid has many other inspirational stories to tell about the way in which its trading model has helped transform the lives of communities around the world; while the work it’s been doing back home in New Zealand this year in opening new markets and growing existing ones is equally compelling. For example:

- Trade Aid now supplies more than 70 percent of fair trade beans to New Zealand’s coffee industry.

- Distribution into supermarkets of Trade Aid products has tripled in the last 12 months.

- Trade Aid now boasts the nation’s broadest range of fair trade food lines, selling more that 50 products including coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, cocoa, oil, spices, dried fruit and nuts.

- Trade Aid educators participated in more than 300 educational activities, such as presentations to community and business groups across New Zealand, during its last financial year.

For more information on Trade Aid, visit www.tradeaid.org.nz.