Excerpts from the address made during the VSO Annual Meeting of Supporters Kensington Town Hall, London October 14,1997
      by: Zenaida M. Quismorio


CCAP believes that the individual craftsworker can better achieve progress by uniting with his fellow workers and acting collectively to solve their problems, both social and economic.

This task was made possible because the concept of Fair Trade has various adherents from the developed countries. These are alternative groups, some of them UK-based, that work on the basis of fair trade, not aid for developing and underdeveloped countries. These organizations are interested in trading with community enterprises that facilitate equitable distribution of benefits among participants. CCAP depended greatly on the purchase orders from these organizations for the past years.

Aside from the fair traders, there are developmental agencies like VSO that are greatly aware of the prevailing unfair trade mechanism and the precarious position of our country's craft industry and are willing to offer technical assistance.

For intermediary marketing organization like CCAP, the sources of problems are dual:

  • Sometimes an organization would send a "developmental specialist" to the field who, armed with his own rigid set of developmental theories and after a few hours of visit to the producers in the countryside, would tell us what their problems are. Some of them would come with their own "indicators" of success, which they would want to set for us and the producers.

  • Sometimes a field representative would visit a producer group, ask the people what they want or need with an easy promise of providing an answer. An overseas field representative would sometimes be overbearing and patronizing that whatever gains the community organizers made in terms of entrepreneurial development and self-determination could in a large degree be eroded by the field visit.

  • There were instances when we would feel frustrated over remarks made that suggested they were buying the baskets out of the goodness of their hearts and that quality, price and delivery dates are not primary concerns. We have seen this kind of approach in other projects over the year that retard, rather than promote, economic progress.


    • Now, more progressive-minded organizations alternative organizations recognize the limitations of the "sympathetic market" and are more honest about the changing consumer behavior and realities of the commercial-hearted marketing environment, but still are able to adhere to their goals of fair and sustainable trade for craftsworkers.

    Problem of Declining Sales
    For the buyers, this is a big burden, but for the producer it is a matter of losing a way of livelihood. To solve this, producers have to be developed more to meet the more stringent demands of the mainstream market. To help the producers in this move, the following are being done:

  • Fair-trade practitioners, like their mainstream competitors, are more candid in their admission that they will not buy low-quality, high-priced products that could not be delivered on target.
  • CCAP is working very hard on raising awareness among the producers of current market demands and doing intensive and extensive product development.


    • This led us to the VSO for assistance.
    The first opportunity for linkage came when two volunteers, Lisbeth Dorama and Klaus Nyhof came to the CCAP office with a few pieces of beautiful woven fabrics made by a group of weavers from an ethnic tribe, called the Mangyans, in a very remote island province. The Mangyans have very few opportunities to increase cash incomes, and handicraft marketing is one of the very few remaining ways that could reinforce Mangyan culture and at the same time bring their living standards to an acceptable level. They sought our assistance in marketing the products- and at the same time told us about how VSO can work with CCAP.

    An initial meeting with Geoff Brown, VSO country representative, was arranged early last year, where we discussed with him our need for a designer from UK who could help us in our product development projects with the producers. We asked him for somebody with a Western perspective on which products will sell.

    By April, VSO Philippines sent us a newspaper clipping of their advertisement for the post. I can still clearly remember what it said: "Overseas & Underpaid & And the best job in the world."

    On September 6, Kate Knight arrived in the Philippines, and by November, after learning-or trying to learn-Pilipino, started working with us at CCAP.

    And much has happened for the producers since then.


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