Our friends at Just Trade are celebrating their 20th birthday!
It is inspiring to see just how far they have come since Laura began working with women in a Lima shanty town in 1997 to provide fairly paid, flexible, part-time work for marginalised women.
It all began with our very own Julia Crellin! Julia lived in Peru at the time and ran an initiative called Achkiy. Laura volunteered on the project. After making voluntary trips for nearly 10 years, Laura founded Just Trade in 2006, to provide a long-term, sustainable route to market for another small project called Hope Jewellery. And ever since, the Hope Jewellery team has grown, overcome difficult moments, built resilience, and achieved great things.
Every member contributes – nothing demonstrates this better than Cristina and her mum Naty! Cristina joined at the very beginning, making jewellery as a young woman, and as the project evolved continued to take on more responsibility until a few years ago when she became the coordinator of Hope Jewellery. While Naty, who had never had paid work in her life, picked up a pair of pliers when she was 60 and is now a valued member of the team and responsible for all the recycling.
With an emphasis on design, quality, capacity building and collaboration, Just Trade has expanded to the provinces of Peru and into Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh, now working with more than 200 artisan makers.
We caught up with Laura about the importance of BAFTS in their journey ..
“BAFTS Fair Trade Network UK has been a significant part of the Just Trade story from the start. We joined as soon as we could, after a year of trading! BAFTS shops were some of our first wholesale customers and have turned into the longest term and most faithful. Through BAFTS membership, we continue to learn and be inspired.
For Just Trade BAFTS is an organisation we could not have survived without. This supportive community of likeminded friends have been there through the good times and the bad. We are eternally grateful to you all for your support and friendship for us and the amazing people we work with around the world.
Listen to Laura speak about her journey with Just Trade on this episode of Courage and Confidence.
Learn more about becoming a BAFTS member.