Forum Fair Trade Indonesia

News & Events

In June-July 2011, FFTI focused its activities on the development of fair trade outlets and increasing the capacity of members.

Fair Trade Outlet continues to display mostly craft products. Our members are mostly focused on craft and only one member cultivates food products. Based on customer’s request, last year FFTI began to cooperate with NGOs in Bali that have business units, especially for food product. In June 2011, we agreed to partnerships with several NGOs in Bali and have established an organic outlet to sell their products. In the fair trade outlet we offer products such as organic vegetables, organic rice, and other organic food from Java and Bali. We will help them to market their products in our fair trade outlets.

This joint program has increased the number of guests that visit our outlets, resulting in increasing sales. Now we have a plan to rename “fair trade outlet” to “fair trade shop” (emphasizing the range of fair trade products and to promote the availability of organic food). Simultaneously, we will also increase promotion in the media with the objective of socializing fair trade and organic products. Through an affective advertising campaign that raises awareness of products and increases sales we can help more artisans, farmers, and fishermen.

The next activity in June was member’s visit, which was integrated into capacity building and network strengthening. We visited Lombok Pottery Centre (LPC) and JPKP Buton (Coastal Zone Resources for Buton). LPC have a beautiful pottery products and Buton also have nice products, such as material (woven), organic cashew nut (the one and only in Indonesia for now), delicious fish, seaweed, and many potential craft. From this visit we got a lot of input from members, such as the need for training in design trends for product and business development.

It was interesting to see the artisan directly make the products that we displayed in Fair Trade Outlet; share with them. They hope that their products can be better known through fair trade outlets, which in turn can improve their lives. In addition, we can write the story of the artisan completed with a photograph, and will display these stories at the outlet. We believe that by making a personal connection between products and artisan it will give an added value to these items.

In the period June- July 2011, FFTI was also visited by several organizations. They are Oxfam Australia’s partners; and Kelompok Badan Usaha Milik Desa Tabarano (Village-owners Enterprises) from Makassar. FFTI (including Fair Trade Outlet) is recognized as a place that combines business and social support for NGOs and some communities. They want to develop similar models of their own, and gave us many suggestion and input too. Hopefully we can effectively cooperate with the organizations and communities in the future.