Capacity Building

One of the Fair Trade principles that we adhere to is improving the production capabilities and access to local/regional/international markets of the partners we work with. To this end we have been assisting the Stepping Stone folk with the design of their soap labels to be compliant with local and international cosmetics regulations.

Some challenges here, as these folk, being intellectually disabled do not have the best manual dexterity. So we now have to think VERY carefully about the actual design of the labels so that they can easily place them on the soap bars. Will be some trial-and-error until we come up with the right design!!!!!!

WHAT DOES TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY MEAN AS A FAIR TRADE COMPANY?

Indochine Natural, as a Fair Trade company and member of the World Fair Trade Organization, is of course interested in running profitably. But this is not at the expense of maintaining our transparent management approaches and commercial relations where we always deal fairly and respectfully with our business partners.

While aiming to run Indochine Natural profitably, we are also concerned with the social, economic and environmental well being of marginalized small producers, and we do not maximize profit at their expense. For example, from the beginning we had a very long-horizon for our relationship with the Stepping Stone Centre, which is a group of rural based intellectually disabled. This relationship is based on a foundation of trust and mutual respect, where both partners benefit, and not just financially.

Probably the most beneficial outcome of this relationship has been our deeper understanding of the intellectually disabled in our local community, the huge amount of respect we have developed for these people, and how we have now integrated an intellectually disabled part-time worker into our office/production facility. For this we will be forever thankful!!

The photo below shows Dr. Mike providing some of the initial training at the Stepping Stone Centre back in 2009.

You can learn more about our Fair Trade practices on our website.

CAPACITY BUILDING

A core value of Indochine Natural is capacity building of marginalized and disadvantaged communities in our local community, and our focus in Penang is the intellectually disabled.

You may be surprised to learn that there are some 600 million people with disabilities worldwide, or 10% of the world population, with 400 million of them estimated to live in the Asia and Pacific region. If we then take into consideration the impact on families, then the lives and livelihood of more than 800 million people, or about 25% of the population, are affected in some way.

People with disabilities are poor because they are denied access and opportunities to education, income, and self-esteem. However, people with disabilities do have the capacity to become productive citizens if they are provided access to appropriate capacity building.

At Indochine Natural we have developed a method to turn waste cooking oil into a liquid household cleaning product, and we have trained the Stepping Stone crew (a group of intellectually disabled) in this methodology and turned it over to them as part of their capacity building towards becoming economically independent.

The long-term savings to families and society as these people become more productive will easily surpass the small investment that Indochine Natural has made in this project. And this is not charity; the relationship between Indochine Natural and the Stepping Stone crew is a business relationship.

You can check out more details on our work with the Stepping Stone crew on our website: http://indochinenatural.com/main/fair-trade/

Learn more about the liquid household cleaning product they make here:  http://indochinenatural.com/main/natural-cleaning-liquid/

This product can be purchased at all JustLife stores: http://www.justlifeshop.com/store-locations/

Or Online:  http://indochinenatural.com/main/shop/