Katherine Hane does CBBA

CBBA is the abbreviation used to refer to the city of Cochabamba.
Katherine Hane is the name that appeared on the nametag I was given upon arrival at FONCRESOL’s national conference.
My name is bizarre here no matter how you cut it, but this was the first time I had seen it interpreted in such a manner. I usually introduce myself as Kate, but if that doesn’t go well I switch to Katia or something along those lines that can roll off the Spanish tongue with more ease than my actual gringa title. The Katherine part on the nametag didn’t come as much of a surprise seeing as how that is in fact my real name. ‘Hane’, on the other hand, was more perplexing, but during one of the earlier sessions on financial accounting I managed to zone out for long enough to figure out that Hane was the result of a couple factors: 1) My employers have a copy of my passport so they have access to my full, official name in all it’s waspy glory. 2) Most Bolivians have two last names and because they were all using their first last names on the nametags I guess they thought they would use my middle name as my first last name. 3) In Spanish J is pronounced as H is in English and so I think someone from my office read my name over the phone to whoever was in charge of making the nametags and they interpreted Jane as Hane.

The conference was held at a hotel about half an hour outside of CBBA and there were about 40 people in attendance from all of FONCRESOL’s regional offices (La Paz, Potosi, Tarija, Sucre, CBBA). FONCRESOL’s last national meeting was 5 years ago, so this was a pretty big deal for everyone. I was just happy to be there and to be a fly on the wall. The meeting was a great way to learn more about the organization and to get to know the people I work with. I learned that FONCRESOL, although it is one of Bolivia’s smaller microfinance institutions, is an extremely dedicated and innovative organization made up of hardworking, committed people. It’s rare to find an NGO where everyone really wants to be there and where everyone is truly passionate about the cause and mission. Logic would suggest that people working for NGO’s would generally be of this nature, but based on my encounters so far in the NGO world I have learned that this is not always the case and that often people working in this sector end up losing faith rather quickly, especially in the developing world. FONCRESOL however, is well stocked with people who truly believe in the work they are doing and who are determined to promote the development of their communities through the solidarity-banking model.
Below is a photo of me and my male coworkers from the Sucre office who didn’t make it into the last blog. Until I saw this photo I didn’t think that I stuck out that much here...

Another thing I learned on this trip about FONCRESOL employees is that not only do they work, but they play hard too. The first night I couldn’t even make it to dinner after the meeting because I didn’t sleep the night before on the bus. The next morning I found out that almost everyone was up until 5 am living it up. The second night I was dead again and wanted to go to bed, but there was an evening of festivities planned. We had teams from group exercises earlier in the day and these were used again for the evening games, which included a karaoke and dance competition. As the only female on my team I was forced to be a representative in the dance competition... Obviously as a result of my participation my team lost, but I still think I deserve some sort of bonus for attempting to compete with a bunch of limber Latin ladies to reggaeton in front of my new coworkers. Thankfully, I have no photographic evidence of the incident, but below you can find a picture of my poor teammates.

In addition to the dancing, a lot of the conference material was out of my league. There was a bunch of technical stuff about the structural changes that FONCRESOL is going make in the coming years and stuff about the financial risk analysis work they have to do. The only session I was really able to engage in was the presentation on Fair Trade.
FONCRESOL is looking to promote Fair Trade among the producers they work with and they’ve hired a consultant and another Canadian intern on board to pilot the project. Going into the presentation what I knew of Fair Trade from my UBC economics courses was that it's a great, simple trade model that everyone should just start using. This presentation broke that utopian perception... It outlined the lengthy certification process that FONCRESOL would have to help their producers with, which involves going through internationally recognized Fair Trade organizations in order to obtain the official ‘Fair Trade’ seal. I understand that some sort of regulation and standardization is necessary, but I was really frustrated to learn how centralized the Fair Trade Labeling organizations are and how their Western/Eurocentric frameworks make it hard for producers of the Global South to insert themselves into these growing markets. It costs €250 to fill out the preliminary application, then €2000-3400 to get inspected and certified, and then €1500-2700 to get recertified annually. For large commercial farmers these costs would be nothing, but the point of Fair Trade is to work with small, subsistence farmers throughout the Global South and to provide them with access to markets where their goods can be sold at a fair prices. It makes no sense to be charging these already struggling producers with such high fees just so that they can sell their goods. Similar fees apply to the people who are purchasing and reselling official Fair trade goods, but considering that importers are usually from developed nations, comparatively those prices are pretty inconsequential. I actually think the regulations should be stricter on the importer side. As the market for Fairly Traded and Organic goods is becoming trendier, more and more companies are trying to jump on the bandwagon in order to improve their socially responsible corporate image and a lot of companies just fake it. This behaviour has become so widespread that there’s actually a term to describe the technique: greenwashing- a company’s efforts to rebrand themselves with an environmentally friendly/socially aware image regardless of whether or not they have actually changed their corporate practices (ie: Starbucks).
I don't want to rain of the Fair Trade parade, I just want to share some of the intricacies I learned about the system that really grind my gears. I guess as it is still a relatively new concept some significant structural and policy changes will need to take place if it's ever going to take off as an effective development tool, which I hope it does. In the meantime I still believe that supporting existing Fair Trade initiatives is the best way to promote better practice.