Preda Developmental Fair Trade - Helping people help themselves.
Preda helps hundreds of producers of handicrafts, bag makers and small farmers live a life of dignity and prosperity. Through Developmental Fair trade, it has many justice projects for the poor, the outcasts and children and women enslaved in brothels and bars for foreign sex tourists.
One the most successful projects of Preda in preventing the trafficking of women and children into the sex industry has been Fair Trade. While Preda supports craft makers, artisans and handicraft makers, sadly since 2007, the sales of handicrafts has been small and the earning go to the producers. There is no surplus for justice campaigns.
Preda Fair Trade has been exporting dried mangos for years. Hundreds of women have direct employment and hundreds more families are saved from exploitation. A campaign to protect and rescue the victims of trafficking is helped by the sale of dried mangos and mango juices, besides helping thousands of small farmers, this project has focused on helping farmers get a higher price for their mangoes and helps them with the growing, harvesting and processing of mango fruits into dried mangos, and it has produced magnificent results. It is also developing organic mangos.
PREDA HELPS END A PRICE FIXING CARTEL.
The project has changed the way the Philippines has done mango business for years. The Preda-Profood partnership challenged the price-fixing cartel that kept farmers impoverished and by buying thousands of tons of fresh mangos from the small farmers at higher prices, Preda and Profood helped end the unjust price fixing cartel. Some years ago, with a partner in ethical trading Profood, Preda offered the best Fair Trade prices to farmers for their mangos and this challenged the unfair low price fixing mango buying cartel. As sales of Preda and Profood dried mangos increased around the world, Preda Fair Trade and Profood increased the volume to hundreds of thousands of tons of fresh mangos bought and they cornered the supply. They created a shortage and the price fixing cartel had to compete and pay higher prices to the farmers. Soon after, the cartel competed with it members and collapsed and all have to pay higher prices for fresh mangos or their business will go bankrupt. All Filipino small farmers have benefited.
Alex Hermoso, who is an advisor to the Fair-Trade department, says: “This volume buying has helped small farmers all over the country. Like a rising tide, all boats get lifted up, so too the small farmers have greatly benefited with the higher prices. Preda wants to keep it like that and our export sales of dried mangos help the Preda projects as well as the farmers.”
This has brought great benefits to the farmers and their families. It keeps them safe and free from the traffickers who exploit their hunger and poverty by offering jobs to their young daughters into far cities and paying them an advance payment for the girl’s salary. Their child is not given a good job but trafficked into a sex club where she is beaten and abused. Preda prevents this and rescued many girls from this evil exploitation, thanks to the help of a percentage of the earning from selling dried mangos. World shops across Europe have donated also to the campaign and to the support of the rescued children and women.
Hundreds of young girls, some only 13 years old and found with venereal diseases and endangered by HIV-AIDS, are rescued in recent years by the Preda project. Hundreds more earn a living for just wages in the processing factory that processes the fresh mangos to dried mangos.
SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE THROUGH PREDA DEVELOPMENTAL FAIR TRADE
In its partnership with local communities, especially the Indigenous People of Zambales, Preda has been planting thousands of mango trees and a mixture of other native trees to have a bio-diversity every year with volunteers. Preda human rights workers are defending the rights of the indigenous farmer from the encroaching mining companies that are land grabbing with the help of powerful corrupt politicians. The land is rich in minerals but the mining corporations destroy the land and environment with open-pit mining causing landslides and forest destruction. Preda is organizing the farmers to protect their rights. Recently, a large community of indigenous people, the Lakas group from Botolan, Zambales won their legal rights to their ancestral land. The president of the Philippines on December 14, 2010 gave a signed certificate acknowledging their rights to ownership. It was a 30 year struggle to win these rights.
WORKING WITH FARMERS COOPERATIVES. Preda Agriculturists Roger Hermogino and Aris Arlantico are traveling to remote villages and cooperatives and training farmers to go organic especially for mango production where there is huge market waiting to pay very high prices for organic produce. Aris Alantico says: “Filipino farmers have been made dependent on spraying chemical inducer to get a big harvest, they earn less because it’s costly and it damages the soil and their trees. Organic mango production is a smaller harvest but healthier and they can earn higher prices to compensate, but they are slow to see the benefit and to change. What we need is a natural organic flower inducer but it’s not yet discovered”. This project saves the environment and protect the people especially women and children from the toxic sprays. Going organic is what the Filipino farmers need today.
PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. It has also been helping indigenous people to protect their ancestral domains. Recently, they have succeeded in claiming people¹s legal rights to the land in Botolan, Zambales. Now, they have joined the anti-mining campaign, because so many of international corporations are coming to the country to explore the land of the poor people and destroying the environment ¬ forests, rivers and mountains.
HUMAN RIGHTS ACTION TEAM FROM PREDA. In the provincial towns and villages, the Preda human rights education team (supported by Irish Aid) organizes and helps the Barangays (local government units) to make their own council¬ required by the law ¬for the protection of children. PREDA’s school education team is out there every day giving workshops and seminars, to educate the teachers and children to know their rights and to protect themselves from abuse. Their province-wide youth organization Preda-Akbay, supports the education teams with exciting puppet shows, theater presentations and a singing group. Fr. Shay has written some of the thought-provoking songs available on the Preda web site that exalt the rights of women and promotes women’s protection and respect.
SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF FAIR TRADE, ACTION FOR JUSTICE FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN. Fr. Shay Cullen the founder of Preda says: “The mission is spreading the good news that we have God given rights, human rights that must be protected, women and children are precious and need their rights and dignity to be respected. We are God’s family that everyone is precious, no matter how poor or needy and we can reach the people more effectively through young people in songs, dances and theatre. Jesus taught through dramatic story, we learned from that and we have made our own Preda comic story book”
SAVING THE CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL EXPLOITATION WITH THE HELP OF FAIR TRADE. The evil trade of selling people into sex slavery is widespread and with Fair Trade justice, we can fight it and save women and children. Most girls are trafficked in the sense that they come from poor families in other provinces, Samar, Leyte, Batangas. There are scouts and recruiters who go to the villages and towns offering jobs as domestic servants or hotel waitresses in big cities. They give some little money to the mother to allow their children to go. The girls are taken away to sex clubs and bars and locked inside. They are told that they cannot leave because their parents have been paid in advance and they have to pay their debts if they don’t want to be arrested. They are trapped. They are charged by the club owner for board and lodging and the purchase of clothes and have endless debts they can’t pay off. It is a way of keeping them controlled. After some time, they sell them to another bar.
THOUSANDS OF CHILD SLAVES, PREDA FAIR TRADE HELPS RESCUE CHILD SLAVES.
The worst form of child labor is sex slavery. Thousands of children are sold to European sex tourists from Italy, Germany, Britain and Spain According to UN children’s agency, UNICEF, there are about 60,000 to 70,000 children being prostituted or used in the commercial sex industry in the Philippines. But the estimates of PREDA are much higher: “We can say at least 120,000 girls under the age of 17 are being used in the sex industry and even more. We don¹t know exactly, because it’s all illegal, it’s a secret. “This work needs fair trade to help it along and for us to do our share. Other church agencies donate also when they see that we have a sustainable industry alleviating poverty in the rural countryside, that we can earn and at the same time we can financially support this important work saving women and children. The award in Barcelona in 2008 recognized this all over Spain. Fair trade dried mangos and mango puree for the drinks industry saves the women and children.
THE DEPRAVED AND EVIL TRADE BY THE SEX MAFIA. Fr. Shay claims that it is easy to get children. He adduces a recent shocking experience: “I was in Manila last week (first week of December 2009 editor’s note). I went around Malate Park and talked to a lady. She offered me young girls, “virgins”. How old are they?”, I enquired. “Fourteen years old, fifteen”. “How much do they cost?” “3,000 pesos” was the answer. “OK! Bring them here!”. The pimp left and while I was waiting I got my companion in a parked van to give me a radio mike and to video tape the scene from the shadows in case she did return. Soon the pimp showed up with two young girls. I was not expecting that, because the government says they had cleaned up that area. Within a quarter of an hour surveying the situation, she had two minors being offered to me on the street, which was not the first time. Previously in similar cases, with the women police headed by PNP General Yolanda Tanigue, the pimps were arrested and the children saved.
Preda has saved women and children and worked in developmental Fair Trade for many years to help producers, the environment, the indigenous people, protect children from traffickers, rescue child workers, prevent slavery and free hundreds of young people for jail and prison, brothels and sex bars and gives them a new life. Thanks to our supporters, friends of the children and fair trade.
