[Vancouver BC 06-12-10] It has been a while since there have been any updates here at encounter earth online. I (Paul) have been busy contracting with Opportunity International, a microfinance organization. I have been based in downtown Vancouver making trips back to Canmore for short stays with my family. But that is soon to change!

At the end of June 2010 Paul, Corey, and family will be making our transition to Vancouver Island to continue our journey of living out social justice and sustainability. We will be living just down the road from our business partners, Bernie and Marlene. As we get our bearings this summer and get connected with our community of friends we want to walk into the next chapter for encounter earth.

There have been contacts already made into Colombia and Peru regarding local entrepreneurs who are very interested in collaborating with encounter earth in direct trade. These next months will be about encounter earth ownership team processing the retooling and the hopeful emergence of an online store with accessories, jewelry, art and some simple clothing pieces available. So please bookmark the encounter earth page and keep surfing over here for updates.

[Canmore, AB 12-03-09] It was about a 18 months ago I posted some incredible videos from youtube that were originally from a BBC documentary titled “Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts. The BS&T series is incredible as 6 young adults from the UK who love to purchase lots of clothing go to India to work in the fashion clothing manufacturing industry beginning in the cotton fields west of Delhi and then all the way to the factories in the slums of Mumbai. These young adults are completely laid bare as they witness and participate in the clothing industry Soon after I posted the youtube videos they were removed because copyright restrictions. Was I ever disappointed.

Today I decided to search online regarding the series and came across a new documentary that has spun off of Blood, Sweat, & Tshirts. Stacey Dooley, one of the people who participated in the initial BS&T series was so moved by her involvement that she has become a social justice advocate for children. She hosts a documentary series titled Kids For Sale.

Kids for Sale is currently posted on youtube and I am going to try again to post these videos over the next week or two. Hopefully the vids will not be removed as the last series was. I am posting part 1 of 6 parts to this initial show in this blog entry. If you have 10 minutes please click on play below and become aware of the huge needs out there…

[Canmore, AB 10-23-09] The past three years of development and launch of encounter earth has literally been a education. The ee team been schooled in fashion, in business, international trade, retail storefront, supply chain, fair trade, and the list goes on. There is much to learn and much more to journey to find what, we believe, is the ideal… Direct Trade.



This first phase of ee operations has been to discover what is currently available in the fashion industry that is truly fair made and sustainable. There is a growing group of manufacturers/suppliers who see the need to bring change. In light of the entire industry it is still but a drop in the ocean but there are many more drops forming.

As we look ahead to 2010 the encounter earth team believes that opportunities are unfolding to see us begin to transition from fair to direct trade. The biggest difference between these terms is first, fewer people are involved in the process of bringing the products to market and second, the stories of the workers and their communities stay with the clothing/accessories and do not get lost after flowing through many companies’ hands.

Dialog has begun regarding Colombia, Peru, Dominican Republic and India. Trips are being planned to some of these locations. The journey towards ee partnering directly with people in cooperatives and small factories is coming closer to reality. We will keep you updated as the changes begin to happen.

[Canmore, AB 09-09-09] As the dream for an encounter earth retail store was still in concept form a key development was the commitment to make jeans a cornerstone product. Jeans are by far the most worn pair of pants in north america. The casual revolution has taken hold in most parts of the continent. I believed that encounter earth had to have fair + sustainable jeans in the store in order to hit the vibe I was looking for. So the hunt for a supplier began… it wasn’t easy!

In my early research I came to realize that the original “fair trade” jean was a very scary looking thing… style and quality control were not in vogue. The basic style was a pair of denim sweat-like pants with a drawstring… yuck! Then I was star struck as I surfed the internet and found a company in the Netherlands that make very cool f+s jeans in Peru. It took me two to three months before I finally received word from this company that they did not distribute to North America. I was crushed. I could not believe that I could look at these jeans but I could not order them. I took a deep breath and had to let go.

A couple of months later I decided to Google one more time “fair trade jeans” even though I had accepted the futility of even trying. To my amazement I came across goodsociety, a jean company out of Seattle, USA. They had fairly made organic jeans from a small factory in India that was owned by a father of one of the team members back in the US. I literally sat back and could not believe my eyes. I made the phone call and sure enough this was for real and encounter earth could place an order! And oh, did we order a lot of jeans… they were shipped directly to Canada from the factory in India.

goodsociety jeans have been a big hit… most people who try them on fall in love with them. The design is incredible, simple and clean. The raw denim is by far the most popular. encounter earth is very thankful for the partnership we have with goodsociety and look forward to carrying these jeans for years to come. If you have not tried a pair on I really recommend coming by and if you are not in the area check out a local eco store. If you do own a pair please comment on this blog entry and let us know your experience with your goodsociety jeans.

[Canmore, AB 05-30-09] Generosity is a wonderful act. I have experienced, many times, the benefits of a generous person. There is a wonderful feeling that comes when someone gives to you without strings attached or maybe a few small ones. It is even more incredible when you are the one who is generous and the joy you can experience when you see the receiver eyes light up with surprise and thankfulness. On the other hand justice, as far as my experience is concerned, is a little more difficult to achieve or experience. Justice requires sacrifice, wisdom and a willingness to tough it out long term to make things right when there is wrong that is usually accompanied with hurt and brokenness.

As a father I find that I gravitate toward being generous or a better word could be lenient and that is not necessarily a good thing. When my children get out of hand into a rapidly degenerative discussion that results in fisticuffs and potentially blood I can take the shortcut of shouting it down, asking them to forgive each other and then let them get back to Wii or the trampoline whilst I get back to my facebook fix or pint on the patio… or I could actually engage in a conversation that will take time, wisdom and interaction, bringing solutions rather than avoiding the root issues.


Dambisa Moyo, Zambian economist speaks out against aid as the solution.

So when I came across the article Why Aid to Africa Must Stop in the National Post today, thanks to Mark Petersen’s blog, the thoughts I had recently about generosity and justice were confirmed. We cannot haphazardly throw money at the global poverty problems hoping that they will disappear. Generous aid is not a solution, it is at best a short-term fix that can only complement a more comprehensive strategy. Justice takes a horribly wrong situation and makes it right. Solutions such as helping those in poverty find a way to climb out through sustainable financial success is a much better path towards making things right. I have friends who are involved in NGOs and businesses that are helping our poor sisters and brothers become successful entrepreneurs and employees breaking the cycle of misery and poverty. That is justice! …and it really makes sense.

The following is from the National Post interview with Dambisa Moyo:


Why aid to Africa must stop

Adrian Humphreys, National Post Published: Saturday, May 30, 2009

Born and raised in Zambia but educated at Oxford and Harvard, Dambisa Moyo was an uncommon face as a black woman in the world of high finance. Now with the publication of her book Dead Aid, she has become an uncommon voice, a strong and eloquent advocate of stopping financial aid to Africa as the best way to help the troubled continent. It is an idea contradicting rock star campaigners, Western politicians and grassroots wisdom all at once. As she makes her way to Canada for a highly anticipated debate on Monday with Stephen Lewis and others at the Munk Debate on Foreign Aid, she spoke with the National Post about her ideas and the hazards of opposing the aid orthodoxy.

—

Q What’s so bad about rich nations sharing their wealth with poor nations to help them cope with their struggles?

A No country on Earth has ever achieved long-term growth and reduced poverty in a meaningful way by relying on aid. It’s just never happened. So we’re pushing a strategy that has no evidence of working anywhere on Earth. And we have years of evidence that the aid strategy doesn’t work.

It boils down to incentive. We have to ask ourselves: Are African governments incentivized to do what governments all around the world are expected to do, that is, deliver public goods: education, health care, infrastructure and security? Unfortunately an aid system has allowed African governments to abdicate their responsibilities…. So until African governments live or die based on job creation and providing goods to Africans and not rely just on getting aid money, we will continue to see a situation where the private sector has not developed and Africans do not have job opportunities. The billion dollars that go from government to government … can make African governments lazy with respect to doing what they are supposed to be doing. It also fuels corruption, can fuel civil wars, inflation, the debt burden, and so on.

Q What do you see as the better way?

A It is a mixture of trade, foreign direct investment, capital markets, the bond market, remittance and microfinance. It is basically fostering a private sector investment into these economies so you actually get job creation. The fundamental problem with the aid model is there are no jobs being created for Africans. It is a band-aid solution. Over 60% of Africa’s population is under the age of 24. These people need jobs or we’ll have a continent of pirates or young people with no opportunities. It is critically important that people understand that Africans want what Westerners want.

Q In order to raise aid money, foundations and aid agencies often turn to television commercials panning across impoverished people amid a damaged wasteland. That hardly inspires confidence that any private funding would be worthwhile as a financial investment.

A I completely agree and that is one of the fundamental problems with the celebrity culture. The focus is so negative. In the book I call it the four horsemen of African apocalypse. They want to focus on war, disease, poverty and corruption. I met with an African woman in Kenya who said to me it is hard enough to raise a teenager anywhere in the world, but try to raise a teenager to be an engineer or a doctor or to really contribute to the global society when you are constantly being told you are poor, you’re inefficient, you need a handout. This is not a formula for success. It is a great disappointment that, by and large, celebrities use their platforms to basically push a negative story. That is not going to encourage anyone to Africa to invest.

Q So you advocate turning off the taps. How soon, how suddenly and how completely should they be turned off ?

A I appreciate you asking that question because I have been completely misrepresented and, I have to say, I think quite deliberately misrepresented, particularly by the NGO community.

I give a five-year example in my book. Very foolishly, the NGOs have jumped on that and [suggest I] said aid should be stopped immediately or, in the worst case, within five years. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is we need to have an exit strategy. Aid can, perhaps, only work when we know the tap will be turned off at some point. We need a phase-out plan to make sure that African governments can wean themselves off of aid. I have also said that countries have very different levels of economic development. My own home country, Zambia, is at a very different level than say, Ghana, or Kenya, or Somalia for that matter. You cannot have one blanket exit strategy for all of these countries.



Bono and Geldof at a DATA press conference in Berlin.

Q Much has been made in the media of pitting your ideas against major celebrities, musicians Bob Geldof and Bono of U2. Not that long ago we saw Bono sitting with our prime minister, eliciting a promise to increase Canada’s spending on Africa. What is your take on the rock star advocacy?

A They have become the de facto faces of Africa. The fact that they globally are viewed as the people defining the policy agenda, attending the G8 and the G20, is completely absurd. It is particularly ridiculous because I believe that the aid system has made many African governments so lazy they have created a vacuum where anyone–in this case celebrities –feel it is OK to jump in and start propounding policy on Africa.

We, as Africans and as a global society, should want to hear from the African governments — what their plan is, what their strategy is. I don’t want to hear from the celebrity about what they think Africans should be doing any more than a Canadian would want to hear from Michael Jackson about the credit crisis.

Q Not all National Post readers are policy-makers, so on a personal level, if someone in Canada is moved by the situation in Africa and would like to help, what would you recommend they do?

A We should be questioning our policy-makers about what they are doing….After a trillion dollars in aid over 60 years and the situation is getting worse, it beggars belief. Those are very poor returns and we would ask those questions about anything else, about any policy for business in the Western world…. I very much hope that if there is one thing that the book does, it is give people permission to ask the hard questions. Someone said to me last week that one of the problems for someone born in Western society is if they even begin to question the aid model they are labelled racist or categorized as insensitive or heartless and I think that is unfair. Also there is a Web site, kiva.org,where you can lend as little as $25 to support entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Q Your book has become a New York Times bestseller, you were named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and yet many object to your ideas. Who is not liking what you say?

A The pushback tends to come from a minority group in the Western countries. By that I mean the NGOs. Some NGOs, rather than have a debate about it, they prefer to label me a genocidal maniac or try to take pot shots or make personal attacks…. I understand they are very interested in keeping the status quo because that is where their jobs are.

Q Speaking of people who might not agree with you, on Monday you will be in Toronto debating your ideas with, among others, Stephen Lewis, a very well-known and passionate Canadian advocate for African aid. Do you see Mr. Lewis’s advocacy any different than Bob Geldof’s or Bono’s?

A By and large it is the same thing, raising money for Africa using what I call a negative platform. All I am saying is their interventions are not meeting the fundamental problems in Africa.

Q Mr. Lewis can draw a tear from almost any eye when he speaks about the problems in Africa. Are you nervous about facing him in public debate?

A No, because I am speaking from the heart. I’m speaking from growing up African. It breaks my heart that people continue to push a model of economic development that does not work and they know it does not work. So I believe it would be a much better use of Mr. Lewis’s time to actually agitate for the things that can meaningfully put a dent in poverty across the African continent instead of pushing a strategy that means that, in another 50 years … your children and your children’s children will basically be paying for my children and my children’s children to go to school and get health care. That is completely ridiculous and not a long-term solution.


Canadian Stephen Lewis speaking out for aid in Africa

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[Canmore, AB 05-08-09] There are times that I measure how to share with people what we do in our shop. There are those who are taken aback by the changes from conventional traded clothing to fair + sustainable clothing. I try to stay on the positive when describing that the cooperatives/companies that we buy our products from have treated the workers well and paid them fairly. It’s like either that is an assumed premise or they don’t really give a damn about who or what happened in the origins of what they wear. I understand the journey towards creating awareness and educating people is long and arduous but there are times I want to take a short cut and let out the frustration regarding the injustices and failure to really care.

I so appreciate those who have gone before us at ee like Yvon Chouinard who founded Patagonia and the Patagonia leadership team. They have journeyed faithfully to uphold people and the environment for over three decades. Through this long season of time they understand and accept their role in bringing incremental change in textile manufacturing and the marketplace. There is lots to learn and do for sure.

[Canmore, AB 04-05-09] Encounter earth is still in early development as a business and way of thinking. There are some very complicated ideas to process when making a priority on partnering within the third world. Looking at Africa for instance, there are many critics who believe that any aid is wasted because of compromising government officials. The result is that a large amount of aid is redirected to the few and the whole cycle of exploitation is recycled.

Here within the encounter earth brain trust we believe that there are other, renewed ways to approach or broach this briar of greed and manipulation. The big idea is to work directly with the entrepreneurs/creative hard working individuals and communities. Aid and development on their own can create dependence but resource appropriately given through pay for work or loaned to people (with dreams to provide for their children and communities) is sustainable!

Check out the TED video below to see what happened to Jane in the slums of Nairobi and what can be the reults of creativity, hardship, and resource:

[Canmore, AB 03-20-09] The article below was written for the BBC in mid 2008. As the globalized world becomes more blurred with people from poor nations crossing borders for employment exploitation will become more rampant in developed nations. Even here in Canmore we have workers on one or two year work permits from Colombia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. Based on what is written in the article below it is interesting that human nature has an inherent evil to manipulate and leverage for gain. The call for integrity and value of others continually needs to be the clarion call for the “least among us.” We need to live by example to counter the malice and avarice with kindness and generosity.

BBC Article - Two Million Workers ‘Exploited’

Up to two million workers in Britain are at risk of exploitation because of their vulnerable work status, a report by the TUC has suggested.

Its research found some employees being paid £1 an hour, some working 70 hours a week and others facing sexual abuse.

The union body, which set up a commission to uncover the extent of such poor treatment, described the situation as a “national scandal”.

The government said it was boosting penalties for rogue employers.

The TUC, which set up the Commission on Vulnerable Employment last year, said exploitative employment practices seen in the 19th Century were still being used by some employers today.

It found home-workers being paid £1 an hour, fast food employees working 70 hours a week and domestic staff facing physical and sexual abuse.

‘Blind eye’
Kate Wareing, director for UK Poverty for the charity Oxfam, said there was an “invisible army” of exploited workers in the UK, who were doing some of the “lowest paid, most insecure and unpopular jobs in the country”.

The report called for a campaign to raise people’s awareness of workers’ rights, extra funding for bodies such as the Heath and Safety Executive and the setting up of a special Fair Employment Commission to police rogue employers and enforce workers rights.

Commission member Kevin Beeston, chairman of public service management company Serco, said it was “time society stopped turning a blind eye to these workplace abuses”.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said the treatment uncovered by the commission was a “national scandal” and said urgent action was needed.

“Good employers have nothing to fear - and much to gain - from policies that stop them being undercut by bad employers who break the law or use loopholes to get round it,” he added.

‘Clear exploitation’
As part of the commission’s report, a Community union survey of 8,000 workers also found three out of four workplaces used temporary and agency workers, with some on contracts of a week or under. Some were on just two hours’ notice.

General secretary Michael Leahy said this was “clear exploitation” of agency workers, who, he said, were being used to undermine the pay and conditions of permanent staff.

Employment relations minister Pat McFadden said the TUC’s report would be looked at as part of the government’s vulnerable workers’ forum, which is due to report back in the summer.

But he said the exploitation of such workers was “unacceptable” and the government had worked hard to bring in extra employment rights such as the national minimum wage, paid holidays, health and safety regulations, statutory maternity and paternity leave and sick pay.

“Most employers do the right thing, but some are doing the wrong thing, so it’s vital we enforce the law,” he said.

“That’s why we’re boosting penalties and enforcement to catch those who don’t pay the national minimum wage and doubling the amount of agency inspectors to investigate abuses.”

New regulations also ensured bosses could not unfairly deduct accommodation and other expenses from people’s wages, he added.

[Canmore, AB - 12-04-08] I am trying to post a video from a reality tv documentary called Blood, Sweat, and T-Shirts. I posted some BS&T vids from youtube back in June but all the related videos were removed from youtube within days of being posted on the ee blog… odd. So here we go again! Let’s hope this video will not be removed, but do not be surprised.

The BS&T series is incredible as 6 young adults from the UK who love to purchase lots of clothing go to India to work in the fashion clothing manufacturing industry beginning in the cotton fields west of Delhi and then all the way to the factories in the slums of Mumbai. This series is eye-opening… unfortunately this is the only clip currently available. However, I am in dialog with BBC and they are in the process of re-editing the series and releasing a DVD through their education department in summer 09… cannot wait! We will definitely play clips on our wall monitors in our shop as well on our website.

This video clip below is not really focused on the production end but rather on the journey these six young adults have from Delhi to the agricultural area where the cotton fields are. They are definitely in shock of the conditions that are normal for the majority of people in India.



Thread is the department within BBC responsible for producing BS&T. Thread is an online fashion magazine that is part of BBC dedicated to bringing the latest in eco-fabulous style. The Thread team is committed to these three principles regarding clothing:
1. Made and traded sustainably - where suppliers of raw materials receive a fair price and workers get a fair wage, with guaranteed rights.
2. Made of sustainable materials - minimising the impact of fashion on the environment. Material made from organic cotton that is safer for farmers, garment workers and the environment, as they’re free from chemical pesticides and fertilisers.
3. Recycled or vintage - keeping clothes out of landfill and cutting fabric waste in factories.

So in recap this is what BBC/Thread did… they developed this reality show called “Blood, Sweat & T-Shirts” (four one-hour episodes.) The producers picked out six fashionistas from around London and sent them to India to discover how their clothes are made. These six young adults are absolutely shocked as they walk into factories, slums, cotton mills and fields not only to see the injustice but to experience it, they had to work and live off the wages they are paid… talk about harsh reality!

PARIS, Dec 1 (IPS) - Just like humanitarian relief, fair trade is a field that attracts passionate individuals with complex world views. Most are not in it for the money. But it is also rife with controversy, as personalities driven by conviction often clash over principles and practice. No two fair traders are alike, which probably explains many of their arguments.

The French Platform for Fair Trade (called Plate-Forme pour le Commerce Équitable in French) is one of France’s largest collectives, representing 39 organisations.



To find the Platform’s offices, one must reach the outer limits of Paris’s northern ring road, cross a disused train yard covered in weeds, locate the railroad workers’ union building (easily made out with its broken windows and bright red posters calling for strikes) and climb up the flights of dusty stairs to a corridor with mostly empty offices.

This is where Julie Maisonhaute, an agronomic engineer, heads a team of women in their thirties who coordinate and promote fair trade in France. Maisonhaute and her colleagues are quite representative of the younger generation of French fair trade activists.

‘‘No one is here for the money, given the modest wages the PFCE pays,’’ she says. ‘‘But they are still incredibly competitive positions to get, because few jobs allow you to work for something you feel strongly about.’’

All members of her team have a similar story. ‘‘We come from different backgrounds — economics, agronomy or international relations — and most of us have graduate degrees. We have all lived a few years in the South,’’ she explains.

Maisonhaute was ‘‘a traveller with a conscience’’, backpacking in-between semesters at her French university. When she graduated, she was already involved with several non-governmental organisations, eventually joining one working in fair trade.

Further up the northern Paris subway line are the offices of Minga, a federation which has been representing 80 small fair trade producers, farmers and importers for the past 20 years. The federation’s offices are a ten-minute walk from the train stop, along the banks of a Seine tributary, across the grey streets of a working-class and largely immigrant suburb.

Michel Besson, the founder of Minga and a long-time Fair Trade activist who is in his fifties, has a rather different story. A former factory worker in the a small town in the centre of France, he decided to follow his partner, a nurse, when she moved to Colombia to assist rural villages in developing health care structures in 1983.

‘‘We spent two years in the mountain, in a village in the province of Cauca, until the guerrillas kicked us out,’’ Besson recalls. ‘‘We had to move to Bogota, and that’s where I met craftspeople who couldn’t find an outlet for their pottery in the hillside slums.’’

‘‘When we got back to France in 1987, we founded an association to promote crafts from developing countries, and that’s how Minga was eventually created,’’ he reminisces with a smile.

‘‘Historically, fair trade in France was a religious initiative,’’ Besson says, alluding to Catholic Church committees which first started buying goods from small cooperatives in poor countries in the 1950s rather than simply donating money.

But those were the old days. According to Besson, fair trade now has everything to do with politics. ‘‘Citizens must reclaim the economy,’’ he says between two cigarette puffs. ‘‘Trade is not a subject taught in school, which is a shame because the way trade is organised determines the lives of so many of us around the planet.

‘‘We should start by making sure the peasants who feed us get a fair deal,’’ he adds.

Putting philosophy into practice, the Minga offices house a documentation centre where the association helps prospective fair traders develop their operation.

As Besson walks in to pick up a copy of their latest publication — a slim paperback summarising the history of ethics and trade from Aristotle to the present day — a tall Senegalese in his twenties and his blonde girlfriend are explaining their business plan to import biologically grown nuts from northern Senegal to France.

Minga helps them to navigate customs and to find outlets for their products. But rather than holding a hard-nosed business discussion, everyone trades news about the state of the coming harvests in West Africa, which is threatened by the latest bout of drought affecting the region.

However, the professionalisation of fair trade, using the latest marketing and consumer survey techniques, is a rather recent trend.

Nicolas Messio, the head of the Alter Mundi network of Parisian fair trade shops, spearheads the movement. Now in his thirties, he graduated from a business school. But the careers his classmates were choosing did not appeal to him. ‘‘Fair Trade was a personal choice, as far as I’m concerned,’’ he remembers.

‘‘I took this class on corporate social responsibility and that sparked a lingering interest in ethical commerce,’’ he explains, sporting trendy black, fair trade sweater and jeans and relaxing over a cup of fair trade espresso in Alter Mundi’s fashionable Bastille shop.

‘‘Fair trade needs to get with the programme,’’ Messio argues, alluding to the bitter and ongoing debate between operators who favour stacking supermarket shelves with ‘‘ethical’’ products and those critical of retailing multinationals’ labour practices.

‘‘Our approach is closer to the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ way of doing business. We start by looking at the market, not the producer,’’ he adds. Under his direction, Alter Mundi carefully studies its market. ‘‘Seventy-five percent of our clients are women, typically in their twenties, educated and with a social conscience.’’

‘‘This is true of all our shops, but particularly so in this neighbourhood (Paris’s 11th arrondissement, or municipal division), which is very ‘bobo’,’’ Messio explains, using the French diminutive for ‘‘bourgeois-boheme’’ (Parisian slang for trendy and lefty) with self-deprecating irony.

Alter Mundi thinks diversity is not only a matter for producers, but for retailers as well. ‘‘We hire most of our staff from vulnerable backgrounds, many are disabled, ex-convicts or former addicts who need a helping hand to get back on their feet,’’ he says.

Whatever their ethics and economics, fair traders are as unique as the coffee beans they import. It almost makes one wish they would, once in a while, drink from the same cup. (reported by Hilaire Avril)