Fair Trade Sports | sustainable eco soccer balls and more

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 “Workers Welfare Society” and decide how to disburse 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.

Eighteen-year-old Sameena Nyaz works at a village stitching center an hour from Sialkot where they stitch sports balls for one of our suppliers. 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 in Pakistan, who has agreed to meet the requirements of the FLO and to cooperate fully with their monitoring teams.

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 Trade wage ensures that the children have enough family support to succeed at school.

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, 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!