Introductions
Both speakers are experienced Aid workers, and the Chairman, Sidney Moss, asked them to give brief “CVs” of their involvement in Aid work before addressing the subject for the evening.

Jane Drapkin
Jane explained that she started in business working for Shell, in Sales and Marketing, but after five years she decided it wasn't for her. She started voluntary work in the United Kingdom with Oxfam, and got involved in some Campaigns work for Fair Trade. She then worked for 2 years in Eritrea helping disabled war veterans to learn employment skills and to reintegrate into their communities back home. After two years, when the contract ended, Jane came home and worked for Christian Aid for a few months campaigning again on Fair Trade. Then for the next 3½ years she worked in a number of overseas countries for Merlin, a medical relief agency similar to Medicins sans Frontieres. She came home and took time out for reflection and to do a Masters degree, after which she rejoined Christian Aid and worked on policy and economic justice issues, especially those affecting Southern Africa.

Just over a year ago, she moved to a consultancy firm working on international development projects funded by the British government, the World Bank, the UN, and on what is called the “governments programme” which is really about power, authority, how decisions are made, how governments are held to account, and how communities can get themselves heard by governments, and to ensure that excluded groups have access to facilities that their governments should offer.

Jenny Brown
Jenny came to this type of work rather later in life than Jane did. She started off her professional life as a Solicitor working in city firms, but after 15 years she decided that she would like to do something socially more useful. During vacations she had been able to do quite a bit of travelling in developing countries and seeing things which are a bit off the beaten track. Even with this superficial type of contact she was able to see not just cultural differences but differences in wealth and resources, and people’s inability to have a say in how they live their lives. She spent a couple of weeks in Zimbabwe during one vacation working on an Aid project with local people in a very rural area that was, she supposes, her "road to Damascus" experience.

After Zimbabwe she worked on a similar project in Cameroon. On her return she spent a year at the LSE doing a Masters degree in Development Studies, and then got a job with Christian Aid, at that point working on the Great Lakes region of central Africa, Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern Congo. She became involved in coordinating a group of agencies which are similar to Christian Aid, but are in other European countries, trying to influence the European Union in the way in which it deals with Aid issues and the political ramifications.

After a couple of years her contract came to an end and she ended up working with a small agency dealing with conflict resolution in some very interesting parts of the world. She then rejoined Christian Aid and her job now is Senior Advocacy Officer for the European Union. She leads and supports attempts to influence the European Union in respect of Fair Trade in relation to developing countries. That is partly about Aid but a lot of it is about politics. So she has spent a certain amount of time in Brussels, but she is based in London.

Jenny touched on the motivation for her “change of direction”. She believes very strongly that we are all called to try and make the world more like the way the God created it, and although we are not all called to make a dramatic career change as she and Jane have done, nevertheless we all have a part to play in helping to make the world the way it was created to be.

Does It Make A Difference?
Jane then addressed the question as to whether the type of work she and Jenny are involved in really does make a difference. There is a lot that can be done and we shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the things that we cannot do. Nobody can do everything.

Money Matters
The first issue mentioned is about giving money because she’s often asked “Does giving money help?” From her own experience, having worked on programmes for which she received funding from charities like Oxfam, the answer is “Yes”. The very first project in Eritrea for which she applied for funding was a work experience programme for 150 disabled war veterans who spent three months working in workshops to gain experience and try and get a life again afterwards.

The total budget for that project was $17,000. That met their costs for transport, accommodation, special clothing and everything else. Half of that funding came from Catholic relief services and half from Oxfam. Jane recalled the image of the first student she saw, his woodwork tools in his hands, actually making something and the picture on his face. Yes, it made a difference, especially for those who got work at the end of it. Yes, money gets through and yes, money does make a difference. Jane recalled working on emergency relief programmes when they have been waiting for supplies to come in and they could only come in when funding was raised.

Of necessity some money has to be spent on administration, phone calls, transport etc, but an awful lot of it gets right down on the ground. But there are clearly more ways to get involved than just by giving money. There are a lot of different reasons why people are poor, a lot of different manifestations of poverty and a lot of different solutions to help bring people out of poverty.

Different Causes of Poverty
Some of the causes of poverty are not just accidents, and they are not just chance. There are reasons why some people who live in poverty are getting poorer and are kept in poverty, it is not just a quirk of fate. Eritrea had been at war with the government of Ethiopia for 30 years that didn't just happen. There were conscious decisions that were involved in the Cold War policy and reasons why governments were supplying arms to Ethiopia, and there were reasons why governments were not supplying arms to Eritrea. There were reasons why the Eritreans had refused to give in to the Ethiopians.

Afghanistan
A different example is Afghanistan. Jane went out with Merlin to help respond to an earthquake. An earthquake is a natural disaster and the reason why outside help was needed was because the people who were affected were incredibly vulnerable, and there were no government resources to provide services even in non-Taliban areas. There had been decades of occupation and civil unrest and all sorts of exploitation. The drugs trade was involved there, and arms trading was involved.

Other Areas
There was an earthquake in the Gujerat region of India, and a phenomenal number were killed, but when a similar strength earthquake happened in Tokyo about 5 people were killed. It is not the natural phenomena that causes the problems, it is all the other structural issues. In Liberia there was war, exploitation, the illegal diamond trade and illegal arms trade. So people are suffering because of war and because of neglect.

World Bank Survey
The World Bank carried out an in-depth survey a couple of years ago when they interviewed about 60,000 people across the world in developing countries about poverty and asked them what they felt about poverty, what poverty meant to them. There was a whole range of responses but they included lack of power, lack of control over your life, lack of a livelihood, lack of access to health care, education, clean water and sanitation, lack of personal security and security for your family, lack of information about things that affect you, lack of dignity, lack of freedom to express your views and your own political ideas, lack of freedom of religion, sexuality, and forms of exploitation and oppression. Quite a range!

Having opened up the terrain Jane handed over to Jenny to narrow it down to just one aspect of the causes of poverty.

Poverty and Trade
Jenny started by saying that trade is one of the structural causes of poverty, and sometimes we don’t realise that there is a link between trade and poverty. Trade operates at two levels: international and personal. We are all aware of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the way that it regulates trade between countries and governments. It would be nice to think that trade at international level doesn’t affect people like us, and that it doesn’t affect the Ethiopian farmers in the market place, but that is where we are wrong. When we think of the WTO we need to think of the effect it has on poor people in poor countries.

Haiti and Rice
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Their main crop is rice. The problem for Haitians is that America subsidises its own rice production enormously, so it is cheaper for Haitian people to buy imported American rice than their own locally grown rice. In Haiti the farmers have very little alternative to earn a living. Apart from rice there is not much else they can grow, so as a consequence of international trade they are in big trouble.

Ethiopia and Coffee
Another example is Ethiopia and coffee production. Coffee is still one of the two or three major exports for Ethiopia. The world price of coffee is dropping massively, and coffee farmers have no control over the world price of coffee. All that they can do is accept what they are given for what they grow, as the Ethiopian terrain is very difficult to cultivate alternatives, and as a result many are going out of business. Again this is the effect of international trade.

Ghana and Chocolate
A final example is chocolate. Ghana produces a lot of cocoa beans and exports them to Europe, and the EU imposes very low tariffs on imported cocoa beans. The Europeans make chocolate (in jargon “add value”) and so make more profit from the cocoa beans. The Ghanaians are prevented from making chocolate themselves and selling it to Europe because the EU would level something like 27% tax on the value of the chocolate imported. The Ghanaians cannot compete with European countries as a consequence of international trade.

Bias to the Rich
Trade, however, is not in itself a bad thing; it can be a positively good thing. At the moment the world trade situation is very much skewed in favour of rich countries, but it doesn’t have to be, and Jenny said that we have a moral and a religious responsibility to try and change the way things work. There are ways in which we can get involved to change the system.

Trade Justice Movement
The Trade Justice Movement is a campaign which started off in the UK with some big well-known agencies such as Christian Aid supporting it. It is a campaign to change the rules of the world trade system. The campaign is going global, and Jenny envisaged it becoming as big as the Jubilee 2000 campaign on debt.

Getting Involved
We can support the campaign by wearing its publicity “stickers”, sending postcards to MPs, MEPs, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and others in positions of influence. When we have the European Parliament elections next year we should discuss with the candidates the importance of trade, development and poverty issues, and then vote. We can support development agencies like Christian Aid and Oxfam and a number of others working in the development field.

Persistence Needed
All of this is working to support local communities in trying to find their own ways through the problems and, as Jane explained earlier, this can be supported by giving money. Political activity etc can take a long time to show results and it can get very frustrating – we have to keep pushing and sometimes look to the medium and long-term strategies. However, in the meantime we can do something ourselves which will make an immediate difference to poor people in poor countries, and at this point Jenny handed over to Jane to talk about Fair Trade.

Fair Trade Defined
Jane defined Fair Trade as a trading partnership which aims at sustainable development for excluded and disadvantaged producers by providing better trading conditions by awareness raising and campaigning.

Paying a Fair Price
So the principles of Fair Trade are that a price is paid to the producers which is deemed fair. Very often the price which the producers are paid is determined in London or New York or wherever, and bears no relation to the cost of production, and is something over which the producers have no control. So one of the principles of Fair Trade is that the price the producers receive more than covers the cost of production. This enables the producers to purchase the essentials they need, e.g. to buy more seeds to plant another crop, but also to feed the family, and perhaps to invest in the means to improve the quality of their product.

Enabling Diversity
Sometimes it may enable diversity as there is too much coffee in the world. Poor producers can’t diversify because they can’t afford to buy new seeds, but by paying a fair price we give them a choice. Producers are also given information about what is happening with prices in the world, information about techniques to improve crop yields etc. They will also be given access to credit which is a key issue as producers have very tight cash flows and often resort to loan sharks who charge high interest rates, thus plunging the producers further into debt. Producers are often supported to set up cooperatives so that they can sell their produce collectively and get a better price. Also they will sell directly to Fair Trade companies and thus get a better deal.

How Do We Know If Goods Are Fairly Traded?
There is an independently vetted sign – the “Fair Trade” mark, and Jane showed this to the audience. It is given by the Fair Trade Foundation, the organisation in the UK which monitors and promotes Fair Trade. There are equivalent organisations in other European and American countries which also award the mark.

Specific Criteria
The Fair Trade Mark is awarded against certain criteria appropriate to the type and nature of the product. The criteria for specific products can be obtained from the Fair Trade Foundation’s website or their literature.

What's Available
Regarding what can be bought that is Fair Trade, Jane drew attention to the goods which were on display and for sale at the meeting. Some of the produce came via an organisation called “Traidcraft”, and much of the Fair Trade produce can be bought in mainstream supermarkets. (Until recently, Marks and Spencer didn’t stock any Fair Trade marked products because they thought that, were they to do so, customers might think that the rest of their produce wasn’t fairly traded!).

Some Fair Trade Products

A Partnership
Fair trade is a partnership, a direct link between us as consumers and the producers. By buying Fair Trade products we are not only giving a fair price, but we are also enabling the producers to gain back some power and control over their lives, a viable livelihood and some dignity.

Jane referred to Jenny’s motivation for getting involved in this work. In Jane’s case her motivation for getting involved in relief work and development and justice issues came about as a consequence of what she saw on her travels. The huge inequalities and injustices she saw in the world made her want to do something about it, and so she got involved in a practical way. For several years there was no connection in her mind between what she was doing for her work or with her life, and her Jewish identity. It wasn’t until she came back and started living in this country again that she started to see a few connections, and it is a case of “the more you look the more you see what is there”. She then quoted from the Babylonian Talmud:

“It is better to lend to the poor than to give them charity, and better still to make a partnership with them.”

This is what Fair Trade is about.

Yom Kippur
Shortly after Jane stopped doing relief work, having been in countries which had been pulled apart by war and conflict, a lot of illegal arms-trading, a lot of illegal logging, and illegal diamonds trade, she came back home at the time of Yom Kippur. During Yom Kippur one atones for various sins and one of the sins is “…the sin we have committed against you knowingly and unknowingly.” Jane felt like interjecting “If only you knew what was going on in the world!” She suggests a rewrite as follows: “…the sin which we commit against you knowingly or by choosing not to know” — because there isn’t that much excuse nowadays for not knowing what’s going on! Jane recommended the book The Dignity of Difference by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, and she quoted the following paragraph from it:

God has given us the means to save us from ourselves, and we are not wrong to dream, wish and work for a better world. In the end great systems of thought are self-validating. To one who believes that the human condition is essentially tragic the human condition will reveal itself as a series of tradgedies. To one who believes we can rewrite the script, history reveals itself as a series of slow faltering steps to a more gracious social order

Buying Fair Trade products can be viewed as a small (maybe not that small) faltering step towards that order.

Poverty is a Form of Slavery
At Passover the Jewish people celebrate the freedom from slavery, and Jane saw this as highly relevant to talking about poverty, because poverty is a form of slavery. It is not necessarily physical chains but all the other aspects of slavery are there – lack of control, lack of dignity, lack of decision making power, lack of information. There is a prayer which is said right at the beginning of the Passover commemoration and Jane and Jenny concluded by reading the prayer together, as it sums up what they had said in their joint presentation:

We pray for all who are still fettered, denied their human rights. That all God’s children sit at his table, drink the wine of deliverance, eat the bread of freedom –

Freedom from bondage and freedom from oppression
Freedom from hunger and freedom from want
Freedom from hatred and freedom from fear
Freedom to think and freedom to speak
Freedom to learn and freedom to love
Freedom to hope and freedom to rejoice
Soon in our days,
Amen.

- Bernard Tiley