Pekerti’ World Fair Trade Day 2008 Celebration

As a Fair Trade organization Pekerti was never absent in celebrating the world Fair Trade day. In year 2008, with the theme “bersama Fair Trade kita selamatkan bumi (with Fair Trade we save our world)” Pekerti celebrated world Fair Trade Day by holding a tree planting activities on May 10th 2008. This activity was held at “Kampung Pekerti’ (Pekerti village), land purchased by a group of Pekerti’s staff and board”. The 12,822 m2 of land has been chosen to become a pilot tree plantation project for the supply of raw materials used for craft.

The activity was attended by Pekerti staff, the board of Pekerti foundation, and also our web developer volunteer. The trees which were planted during this activity were meranti, mindi or geringging (Melia azedarach L.), Albasia/Sengon/Jeungjing (Albizzia Faccata), mahogany (Swietenia Mahagoni Jacq), pulai three (Alstonia angustiloba), acacia mangium, and Ganelina/Jati Putih (Tectona Grandis L).

This tree planting activity was a part of the activities of the "Planted Conservation Pekerti Project" as an effort of Pekerti to save the environment. Having the same concern to conserve the environment, one of Pekerti's buyers, Traidcraft, has taken a part in this activity. Traidcraft gave a donation to help Pekerti implement the conservation project. The donation from Traidcraft was used to buy the seed, fertilize the land, take care of the plants, and other activities, which aimed to keep the plants growing well in Pekerti's land.

Pekerti’s 2008 Annual Meeting

As with the year before, PEKERTI held an annual meeting with its producer partners. Attended by the board of the foundation, the director, staff and the 18 representatives of producer groups from several regions in Indonesia, the annual meeting was held for 4 days in Anugerah Wisata Hotel, Kaliurang, Yogyakarta started at 13 - 16 May 2008.

Pekerti’s annual meeting started with the annual member meeting of Koperti. Koperti is a cooperative which consists of Pekerti’s staff, the board of Pekerti foundation and the producers (Pekerti’s partner). The annual members meeting discussed the 2007 program of coops which have been successfully implemented by the Cooperative board. Aside from that, the annual member meeting also discussed the problems that arose and found out the solutions. Before the annual member meeting, there was a seminar about the introduction of syariah concept in coops.
After the Koperti’s members annual meeting, the annual meeting of Pekerti continued with delivering a training of 10 Fair Trade principles and its application in the producers’ daily activity, and also the principles of working with group, which is done in a group discussion. As a result of group discussion, its shown that the producers had actually already done most of the Fair Trade principles. They had done the principles on their own way based on their own understanding the principles. However, after the discussion the producers tried to arrange the application of Fair Trade principles in more well regulated way. On the discussion also, the producers set up programs for a year base in applying the Fair Trade principles in their working community. In addition to the training of Fair Trade principles and working with group principles, in order to widen the insight of the producers, a fair wages and costing pricing training was delivered to the producers. This fair wage training was adapted from the ‘Fair Wage Guide Training Manual’ as the result of discussion with the staff of World of Goods (www.worldofgoods.org)

Beside the trainings, which were an activity of promotion of Fair Trade, to the newcomers who attended the meeting, one of the important parts of the annual meeting was the responsibility of reporting what Pekerti done for the year 2007. The evaluation of the relationship among Pekerti staff and producers also became one of the important sessions in this annual meeting. Problem solving and improvement would lead us to have a better relationship in the future. The exciting moment was at the time when the reward was given to the three biggest Pekerti suppliers. This reward was given to the producers as appreciation for their hard work for the year and also as an incentive for other producers to do better next year.