Here’s a quick visual tour of how we create that high-quality, hand-stitched Fair Trade Sports soccer ball that is conveniently delivered to your front porch.

From flat designs on paper…

…our Master Printers and Cutters create and divide the 32 panel pieces…

…for our adult stitchers receiving Fair Trade wages to hand-stitch.

Bushra is pictured here, holding a completed Fair Trade Sports soccer ball.

The final Fair Trade Sports soccer balls are packed and shipped from our Pakistani partner to our Seattle fulfillment warehouse…

…ready for you to purchase!

Just thought I would share one of my favorite new photos. It’s great to put faces (and names) with the sports balls with which you play, train, and compete.

Pictured here are Mr. Shahid Imran and Mr. Shaukat Ali, who have been diligently working with the rest of our manufacturing team on our sports balls.

Several of you have been asking more about our centers where the Fair Trade Sports balls are hand-stitched. The production line at our manufacturer (Talon Sports) includes everything from lamination to packaging at the central facility. The hand-stitching is done at ILO-monitored stitching centers; our manufacturer is in the Top 3 companies with 100% production in ILO-monitored centers.

Quick bit of history: the ILO (International Labour Organization) is the specialized agency within the United Nations which "seeks the promotion of social justice and internationally recognized human and labour rights". It was founded in 1919 and is the only surviving major creation of the Treaty of Versailles which brought the League of Nations into being and it became the first specialized agency of the UN in 1946.

Talon has earned a place in the ILO’s "A-list" (also marked as the "Trade’s Outstanding Performance" list). We are quite proud of our manufacturing partner. Not only do they consistently produce sports balls of the highest quality, but can do so without resorting to destructive business practices. Our partners in Sialkot are true leaders in their industry.

Should you wish to learn more and see the results yourself, visit the IMAC website (Independent Monitoring Association for Child Labor).

Pakistan supplies around 70% of the world’s soccer balls, with an estimated 44,000 men and women stitchers in the Sialkot region of Pakistan involved in the production of 35 million soccer balls every year. The industry has been criticized for low pay, poor working conditions and the widespread illegal employment of children who are forced into work because adult wages are often too low to support a family. International campaigns in the 1990s saw some success with gradually moving production away from home-based stitchers to independently monitored stitching centers and providing constructive alternatives for children such as basic education and skills training. However, low pay and a lack of social benefits remain issues for workers in the industry.

Factory workers produce the internal bladders and also laminate, cut and print the 32 panels that make up each soccer ball. The sets are then delivered to dozens of small stitching centers in villages around Sialkot. The balls are stitched together then returned to the factory for washing, quality control and packing. The stitching centers employ up to 15 workers who stitch a maximum of three balls a day, each one requiring around 650 stitches. The centers are operated by the main factories or by subcontractors and are segregated by gender to comply with religious and cultural values.

Our manufacturer, Talon Sports, is a large-scale producer employing around 2,500 factory workers and contract stitchers. Production is split 50/50 between sports clothing and sports balls - mainly soccer balls but also rugby balls, volleyballs, rugby balls, and more - that are assembled at more than 50 stitching centers. Talon Sports is the leading manufacturer producing sports balls that are certified to be Fair Trade and thus free from child-labor.

Is Fair Trade the perfect system, without flaws? No. But to quote the quotable Ben Harper, what good is a cynic with no better plan? "Fair Trade" is often compared to "free trade" in popular media. Here’s a brief clarification…

FAIR TRADE 

Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers - especially in developing countries. Fair Trade organizations (like Fair Trade Sports), backed by consumers, are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade. Fair Trade’s strategic intent is:

• Deliberately to work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency,
• To empower producers and workers as stakeholders in their own organizations,
• To actively to play a wider role in the global arena to achieve greater equity in international trade.

In comparison to "free trade," the fair trade movement, also known as the trade justice movement, promotes international labor, environment and social standards for the production of traded goods and services. The movement focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed World. Learn more.

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FREE TRADE

In international trade, free trade is an idealized market model, often stated as a political objective, wherein trade of goods and services between countries flows unhindered by government-imposed artificial costs. Intellectually, this arrangement is supported by followers of the neoclassical and micro-economic schools of thought. It is opposed by anti-globalization and labor due to perceived tendencies for abuse by wealthier states.

The term is given to economic policies, as well as political parties that support increases in such trade. Free trade is a concept in economics and government, encompassing:

• International trade of goods without tariffs (taxes on imports) or other trade barriers (e.g., quotas on imports),
• International trade in services without tariffs or other trade barriers,
• The free movement of labor between countries,
• The free movement of capital between countries,
• The absence of trade-distorting policies (such as taxes, subsidies, regulations or laws) that give domestic firms, households or factors of production an advantage over foreign ones,
• Trade-distorting policies to enforce property rights so as to ensure the above conditions.

Depending on the specific context, use of the term free trade can signify one or more of the above conditions. However, it is fundamental that only governments can restrict trade: they have the legal monopoly over the use of physical force in a geographical area.

The term free trade has become very politically based, and it is not uncommon for so-called "free trade agreements" to impose additional trade restrictions. Such restrictions on trade are often due to domestic political pressure by powerful corporate, environmental or labor interest groups seeking special protections of their perceived interests. Learn more.

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What’s your take on Fair Trade versus free trade?

David Batstone from Right Reality recently did a post on child labor based on a trip he did to Peru. A quick excerpt:

"Our initial effort is to make a clear distinction between "child labor" and "entrepreneurial children." Political policies that seem so universal in the United States and Europe turn relative in other global communities. The condemnation of child labor is a good example. Nearly all Western human rights groups monitor it, and fair trade activists lobby to make it a standard for compliance.

The best "compacts" for corporate behavior in global markets - the SA 8000, for instance - ban the employment of children under 15 years of age. But we discovered that the primary life skills strategy for helping street kids in Lima, Peru, was to put the kids to work." 

A complex problem to be sure. A problem to which we here at Fair Trade Sports are seeking to make a positive contribution in two ways. First, by supporting and evangelizing the Fair Trade movement, which strikes at the underlying causes of child labor. And second, by giving away all our after-tax profits to children’s charities, funding experts in the field to best meet the unique needs of each global region’s at-risk children.

Batstone’s team has set up the Children’s Aid Fund to help children around the globe who are designing innovative solutions for their own futures. Learn more by contacting the CAF’s executive director, Kique Bazan.

What are your thoughts on the complexity of the child labor issue? 

How exactly do your dollars help when you buy a ball from Fair Trade Sports?

 A significant milestone for Fair Trade is that the producers of a product should earn enough in order to provide for themselves and their families. If adults can pay for shelter, food, clothing, medical needs, emergencies, and expenses for education, then children no longer have to contribute to family income. We at Fair Trade Sports sell only balls that have passed the standards of the Fairtrade Labeling Organization (FLO).

The payments we make for these balls includes a 20% premium, which is used for improving the lives of the workers, their families and their communities. Together, workers and management form a "Talon Workers Welfare Society" and decide how to dispurse the Fair Trade Sports half of the 20% premium to benefit the group (the other half goes directly to the workers themselves). Programs include community clinics and healthcare insurance - a first in this industry - as well as micro-credit loans and more.

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Operation for Young Woman

Eighteen-year-old Sameena Nyaz works at a village stitching center an hour from Sialkot where they stitch sports balls for Talon Sports, our exclusive supplier. She recently needed a thyroid operation, which would normally be a source of real worry as medical care is very expensive. But her treatment was paid for by the health care plan set up by the Welfare Society and funded by the Fair Trade premium.

For balls ordered under Fair Trade conditions, stitchers receive wages which are approximately 50% higher than before. The piece rates have been calculated in such a way that two stitchers can earn 6,000 Pakistani rupees, enough to provide for an average family. Our sports balls come direct from our manufacturer, Talon Sports in Pakistan, who has agreed to meet the requirements of the FLO and to cooperate fully with their monitoring teams.

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Tea and Milk

Brothers Zulafkar Ali and Saftaz Ahmad, both stitchers with young families to support, applied for a loan to start a tea shop in the annex of one of the stitching centres. Several years later their monthly cash flow from the shop is as high as their original loan, providing them with a good additional income. The milk used in the tea is supplied by a neighbor who purchased a buffalo with the help of a loan from the credit fund. The brothers are now pursuing an expanded product line to include convenience products and household items.

 

Fair Trade calculations estimate that a family should have 6,000 rupees per month to cover all basic needs and have some "money on the side." Fair stitching wages are calculated to provide - if Fair Trade orders are there all the time - individual incomes of more than 3,000 rupees per month. Two earners are needed per family to reach the Fair Trade minimum. It is not enough to simply bar children from working; the fair living wage ensures that the children have enough family support to succeed at school.

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A Bumper Crop 

Forty-five-year-old Mohammad Riaz is pleased that he is now able to provide better for his wife and four children. His main occupation is stitching sports balls for Talon Sports, which gives him the opportunity to increase his wages when stitching Fair Trade balls. But like most of his fellow workers he also works the fields to supplement his income. He cultivates winter wheat and a main crop of rice on his two hectares of land.

A few years ago he took out a loan from the credit fund to help pay for an irrigation pump. The next season he harvested a bumper crop of five tons, which he sold to the rice mill for $1035. Further good harvests have allowed him to pay back the loan, replenishing the credit fund and making small loans available to his colleagues.

Please tell a friend about Fair Trade Sports and continue to support our efforts to fight against extreme poverty!