Degree honour for Harriet Lamb
Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation, will be awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Aston University today. The accolade recognizes her work in bringing together British consumers with farmers and workers in the developing world and making trade fairer. The ceremony will take place at Birmingham Town Hall at 11am. Students, their families and friends will join in the celebrations.
Harriet Lamb said: ‘Congratulations to Aston University for achieving Fairtrade University status and in particular ensuring that every student and the wider community at Aston knows about Fairtrade. It’s an achievement for the students, but also the caterers, senior managers and university staff. I am deeply honoured today to receive this degree from such a great university, which just happens to be in Birmingham which is a Fairtrade City! Universities play a crucial role in the wider Fairtrade grassroots social movement, and make a real difference in leveraging change for producers in the developing world.
‘For me, the key impact of the Fairtrade system is how much it matters to the farmers. Without Fairtrade some of them have to make a genuine choice between putting food on the table and sending their children to school. The Fairtrade system ensures that they can earn a decent wage, and live a dignified and sustainable lifestyle; it means that they can make poverty history for themselves. It also gives the farmers and workers a sense of pride that someone in the UK is choosing their product because of the Fairtrade label; they become something more than a distant, forgotten producer at the end of a very long supply chain. In this way the Fairtrade system brings together consumers and farmers; it gives you and I the opportunity to play our own part in making trade fairer.’
Harriet Lamb has been Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation since 2001. She has guided the Foundation through a period of staggering growth, which has seen estimated sales of Fairtrade products in the UK increase from £30m in her first year to in excess of £700m in 2008. Sales have been increasing by over 40 percent year-on-year since 2002. The number of products carrying the FAIRTRADE Mark has grown from 80 to more than 4,500 licensed products. This enables some 7.5 million farmers and workers and their families across the world to participate in Fairtrade. A flourishing grassroots social movement has also grown across the UK. There are now almost 500 Fairtrade Towns – towns where a commitment to Fairtrade has been made by the council, shops and businesses – together with 87 Fairtrade universities and nearly 5,000 Fairtrade Places of Worship.
Harriet came to the Fairtrade Foundation from Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO) in Germany where she was Acting Director and Banana Co-ordinator. Before this, she worked as Head of Campaigns at the World Development Movement (WDM) and with other non-governmental organisations, always with an interest in international development issues.
Harriet spent part of her childhood in India when her businessman father went to work there. Later as an adult, she returned to work with farmers in rural villages and landless labourer cooperatives. Harriet was educated at St Mary’s Calne in Wiltshire and then Cambridge. She later studied for an MPhil in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex. As well as travelling extensively in India, Harriet has travelled in Sri Lanka, Africa and Central America.
In February 2008 Harriet’s book Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles was published through Ebury. The book is a fascinating story about the rise of Fairtrade and what that means for producers in the developing world. Harriet says the battle has only just begun. ‘With each purchase, we are helping build that living, more humane alternative,’ she says. ‘And, at the end of the day, I am a mother who wants mothers the world over to realise the same dreams for their children as mine.’
Harriet lives in south London with her partner and two children and can often be seen cycling around London. Harriet was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List 2006, in recognition of her work in building Fairtrade in the UK. In 2007, Harriet was awarded the prestigious title of Credit Suisse Outstanding Woman in Business, and, named eco queen at the Ultimate Women of the Year Awards by Cosmopolitan magazine.
Speaking at the graduation ceremony, Dr Caroline Witton, Reader in Neuroscience at Aston University will say: ‘Perhaps it is not surprising that Aston people should be so firmly behind the message of Fairtrade; our students and staff come from over 100 different countries around the world. Indeed in the hall today we have graduands from many countries where there are Fairtrade producers. Many more of us will in future travel and work in the many countries where the poorest farmers and workers are being given a chance by the Fairtrade system. Harriet is one of those comparatively rare people who did indeed have the courage to light a candle, and the strength to take up Gandhi’s challenge ‘to be the change she wished to see in the world’. And what makes her achievements so really wonderful is that, through the Fairtrade system, she gives us all the opportunity to do so too.’
– ENDS –
Notes to Editors
1. The FAIRTRADE Mark is a certification mark and a registered trademark of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO) of which the Fairtrade Foundation is the UK member. The Fairtrade Foundation is an independent certification body which licenses the use of the FAIRTRADE Mark on products which meet international Fairtrade standards. This independent consumer label is now recognised by 70% of UK consumers and appears on products as a guarantee that disadvantaged producers are getting a better deal. Today, more than 7.5 million people – farmers, workers and their families – across 58 developing countries benefit from the international Fairtrade system.
2. Over 4,500 products have been licensed to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark including coffee, tea, herbal teas, chocolate, cocoa, sugar, bananas, grapes, pineapples, mangoes, avocados, apples, pears, plums, grapefruit, lemons, oranges, satsumas, clementines, mandarins, lychees, coconuts, dried fruit, juices, smoothies, biscuits, cakes & snacks, honey, jams & preserves, chutney & sauces, rice, quinoa, herbs & spices, seeds, nuts & nut oil, wines, beers, rum, confectionary, muesli, cereal bars, yoghurt, ice-cream, flowers, sports balls, sugar body scrub and cotton products including clothing, homeware, cloth toys, cotton wool and olive oil.
3. 7 in 10 households purchase Fairtrade goods, including an extra 1.3 million more households in 2008, helping Fairtrade sales reach an estimated £700m in 2008, a 43% increase on the previous year. There are over 460 producer organisations selling to the UK and by the end of October 2008 872 certified producer groups were in the global Fairtrade system, representing more than 1.5 million farmers and workers.