Fair-trade firm prepares strategy to aid Swaziland

from NE Business

Here is a good profile on a fair trade business. This explores some of the challenges in keeping a workforce when you struggle with diseases like AIDS or malaria.

by Andrew Mernin,

IMAGINE running a business where almost 50% of your employees are infected with a potentially killer disease and the average life expectancy of your workforce is just 31.

Imagine standing by as key employees become severely ill or die on a regular basis, leaving your company and community in a constant state of disarray.

These are just some of the trials and tribulations faced by businesses in the Aids-ravaged, poverty-stricken Southern African state of Swaziland.

However a North East fair-trade company is hoping to change things as it prepares its long-term strategy to help the country, which sits between South Africa and Mozambique.

Today Andrea Wilkinson of the Newcastle-based Shared Interest Foundation will head to Swaziland as part of a 23-day visit to Africa.

The company will conduct what it calls a needs analysis of the country to evaluate how the ethical investment house can help the local community.

From its Newcastle HQ, the society currently co-ordinates regional offices in Costa Rica and Kenya and is soon to open a further base in Peru, with the aim of raising current investment levels from £23m to £75m by 2012.

Through the Shared Interest Foundation, it gives vital training to sustain growth and survival in an increasingly commercial world for third world countries.

Ms Wilkinson, originally from Berwick and a Northumbria University graduate, said: “In Swaziland 42% of people have HIV/Aids and average life expectancy is 31.

“In the handicraft business they have a key craft person who teaches everyone how to make a particular item. But if they are then lost to Aids, there is no contingency plan to keep up with the running of the business. Shared Interest will step in and offer training and a long-term solution to the problem.”

Ms Wilkinson will also visit Kruger national park where its inhabitants have faced huge upheaval in the way they are able to generate income.

She said: “There are groups that used to be hunter gatherers which can’t do that because it’s a national park so now they have to make handicrafts.”

Link to full article. May expire in future.