Fair Trade
Handcraft production is one of the largest forms of employment in the world. For many rural artisans and farmers, handcrafting is all they have access to. There are no factories in their communities, and all they have is the world around them and their own two hands to feed themselves and their families.
Through fair trade, we're able to pay these artisans and farmers for their handcrafting. Fair trade provides opportunity to those whose work is limited by geographic location and social circumstance, where factory work and other employment options are unavailable.
Fair trade is a commitment to better trading conditions on behalf of the people who actually make and grow products. Artisans and farmers are paid fairly for their work and benefit from safe working conditions. Fair trade is a system that creates long-term relationships based on dialogue, transparency, honesty, and respect.
Even with the efforts of the global fair trade movement, poverty still exists, and has no easy solutions. Can we still reduce the effects of poverty even though we can't eradicate it? Through fair trade and by adhering to the values we've believed in for over 70 years, we can.
Every letter in our name SERRV has purpose, and stands for an important part of our mission.
Sustainability
For SERRV, sustainability is so much more than environmental. For our artisan and farmer partners to thrive, they need reliable economic, environmental, social, and intellectual opportunity.
When you buy fair trade, you help create that sustainability. Through steady orders, fair wages, and advance payment, SERRV empowers marginalized global artisans to build reliable income through handcrafting, wellness and prosperity through a healthy planet, social justice and self-sufficiency, & inspiration through cultural tradition and innovation.
Sustainable Employment
We believe in trade as a solution to global poverty--it's in our DNA. Fairly traded handcrafted products and foods help create employment for thousands of artisans and farmers worldwide.
By creating long term trading partnerships, artisans earn steady and reliable income where jobs are scarce.
Sustainable Resources
We believe in the power of our planet to teach and inspire prosperity. There's so much our planet can teach us, and we've listened. Nature inspires us, and we've seen lives transformed by little more than access to seed money and support for those seeds to grow. Our planet is a lifeline for the world's poor. By providing them with food, shelter, and raw materials for income, nature offers models of sustainability essential for ecological and economic prosperity.
By responsibly using the world around them, artisans and farmers can utilize fast growing grasses and woods, recycled materials, and more to create a reliable source of income through handcrafting.
Sustainable Rights
We believe that life isn't fair, but the way we treat each other can be. It's impossible to understand why so many people around the world struggle with poverty, and impossible to put ourselves in their shoes. But we believe each of us are able to care for others, and measurably happier when we do.
By supporting themselves through handcrafting, artisans and farmers living in the world's most remote regions and overpopulated cities can create steady employment and earn a fair wage for their work.
Sustainable Vision
We believe in the power of hope, but only when backed by a plan. Positive thinking is powerful, but hope is hard to have without opportunity, and that hope needs more than charity to happen. By empowering the poor to help themselves, we help reduce the effects of poverty for nearly 8,000 artisans and farmers worldwide.
By believing in their futures, artisans are able to build confidence in themselves and their work, and preserve cultural traditions while creating a better and brighter future for themselves and their communities.
Learn more about SERRV's mission and how you're helping make an impact for global artisans and farmers through fair trade.
