Fairtrade Impacts by Valerie Nelson

Author:Valerie Nelson [Nelson, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780449074
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Practical Action Publishing
Published: 2017-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Training and education

Training and education are crucial for empowerment as they help to build the capacities of women to act both in their own best interests and in those of their fellow women. Other than the purchasing of things (from T-shirts to crèches), the Fairtrade premium has also been used to fund various courses for workers at certified farms. These have included IT training, establishing a kitchen garden, nutrition, and driving lessons. For these women courses were significant: ‘You know this job is not forever,’ said one woman, ‘they can come to you one day and say you are fired. But if we have received these courses, like hairdressing, I know that I can sit down and braid someone’s hair and that will give me the 20 shillings I need to buy milk for my child’.

Where there are low levels of educational attainment, training plays a crucial role in fostering empowerment. Training can help workers gain greater levels of self-confidence and knowledge about their rights and health issues, as well as practical skills, all of which are crucial in facilitating empowerment. At the workplace, ‘Gender wame neutralize wanaume [the gender committee has neutralized the men]’ said one worker. ‘It helps defeat traditions and cultures. We too have the right to work here. The women have been taught, we have that freedom’.

A training manual highlights: ‘Capacity building, one of the requirements repeatedly found in the Fairtrade standards, is all and above about empowerment’ (FLO, 2007b: 10).

Training funded by the Fairtrade premium is not just limited to courses, but also member training on the purpose of the premium as well as numeracy and literacy explicitly geared towards improving their ability to carry out their roles. However, at the time of this study, many members had not yet received this training, with one stating: ‘Maybe once we go for this training, is when we will be able to come back to the farm with new ideas and teach the others that projects do not just have to be sleeping materials’.

Furthermore, only a few workers at a time are able to benefit from training offered through JB premium expenditure and due to the nature of the project selection, these are often men. When we look at the capacity building offered to the JB members themselves, there are no mechanisms in place for this training to be disseminated among the broader workforce and the benefits remain with the few.

In contrast, training delivered via the GCs have two main differences. The first is that the training offered to members is not just explicitly that which will help them to fulfil their roles as JB members, but also gives them a wider variety of skills that can help them both in the workplace and at home. Secondly, the GCs also act as a peer education tool, with management using committee members to disseminate training and information to the workforce at large. At meetings, GC members are taught by the company or by NGOs about a wide variety

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