Trade As One

Trade as One has partnered with Advent Conspiracy for the last three years. We love what they do in calling us all to make Christmas simpler, more meaningful and an opportunity to remember the poor. As a movement it has spread incredibly fast from starting with just three churches to now thousands of churches and tens of thousands of individuals across the world. They recently did an interview with our founder, Nathan George. Take a look at the page here or read it below!

Q: What do you see as Trade as One’s role in redeeming Christmas?

A: When we do give gifts at Christmas, I want them in some powerful way to point to the sort of world that Jesus came to introduce us to - a world where the poor and marginalized are included. A world here the poor receive the dignity that the image of God entitles them to. To me that means the provision of dignified jobs, not just the recipients of our pity and charity. The way Trade as One tries to do that is by sourcing products that can be given as unique gifts that have stories of lives transformed through dignified work.

Q: When you say that the products have such stories, what do you mean exactly?

A:  I mean that messenger bag made by a woman rescued from sex trafficking in Cambodia, given aftercare and trained to make a product that we see value in. I mean a piece of jewelry that is made by someone taken from the brothels in Bangkok. It’s a rug made by a woman living alone in a slum in Nairobi, shunned by her family and community because she contracted HIV from her now dead husband who passed it on to her. It is a bar of chocolate made from the cocoa harvested by people in Ghana who own shares in the chocolate company and who re-invest the dividends in drilling wells in their community. If you drive demand for products like this, you have a model for eliminating grinding poverty through the use of our spending rather than just our giving, and as a business guy that excites me.

Q: Now I know that Trade as One’s focus is on partnering with churches in America, why chose to focus on that rather than just go to the general public?

A: Well we do sell to anyone through our website of course, but I believe that the church is God’s plan for the redemption of this very fractured world. Is there a plan B? Never say never, but what I do know is that if the church in North America rose to this challenge of engaging their spending power in the fight against extreme poverty it would have an unprecedented influence. Estimates vary, but we are told that over 100m people attend church and who consider their faith very important to them in America. Together they spend an estimated $2.5 Trillion. Imagine how many dignified jobs among the poorest of the poor that could be created if a fraction of that spending was on products that we need and they can supply? So theologically I am passionately persuaded that the church needs to take a lead in this area that is loosely termed Fair Trade, but I am also pragmatically convinced of the enormous opportunity we have as believers to proclaim good news to the poor and freedom to the captive.

Q: When most people think of Fair Trade they think either of coffee or of souvenir type products that people don’t really need, or clothes made in co-operatives. Do we really need more of that?

A: You’re right. In some ways the fair trade movement has earned itself a bad reputation in that way. We work really hard at Trade as One to source products that people buy and use every day, and of a quality that would put them on a par with things you would find in good stores on main street -coffee yes, but also chocolate, T Shirts, hats, kids stuff, practical bags, olive oil, shampoo, rugs, Christmas cards, journals.

Q: If there was a word you would like to leave the AC subscribers with, what would it be?

A: Let’s use Christmas as an opportunity to move the dial closer to a more biblical way to look at using the resources we have been entrusted with - let’s live more simply, give more generously, and buy more ethically.