2020, the year that will be etched into our collective memory as the Covid-19 year, the year that had a major impact on both our personal and professional lives.
Proximity plays an important role in the TDC’s activities: the coaching programme that TDC has developed relies on mutual trust between coach and producers. This trust is built up by the coach making regular visits to the producers over a period of 3 years and giving sessions tailored to the organisation in an environment they are familiar with. During the Fair Trade Week, our largest awareness campaign, TDC is strongly committed to the local approach: giving people the opportunity to discover fair trade in their own area.
But suddenly everything changed: the coaches could no longer travel, local organisations could not physically bring people together. For TDC, 2020 was therefore also the year in which a lot of flexibility had to be shown. With remote coaching and the engagement of local coaches, the programme could still get started for the 34 selected producer organisations. The selected projects during Fair Trade Week organised their activities for a (more) limited public or tried to introduce people to fair trade digitally.
Role as knowledge centre with lead in topic local fair trade
The coronavirus crisis, climate change, exploding inequality, destruction of biodiversity… The increasing number of crises is pushing us to face facts: we have to take a different approach to how we trade. With 15 interviews, 6 analyses, 3 studies and 2 inspiring debates, TDC was also able to enthusiastically fulfil its role as a knowledge centre on fair trade and sustainable trade.
With the study ‘Belgian and European fair trade’ in particular, TDC took the lead on a topic that is becoming increasingly more important within the sector. With this, but also with other topics and figures from its studies, TDC was able to put the focus on fair and sustainable trade, with approximately 180 press mentions in October.
Number of successes
Despite the difficult year, TDC achieved a number of great successes: the best and second best cocoa cooperatives in Côte d’Ivoire both received coaching from TDC, an ambitious project was started with Galler as part of the Beyond Chocolate initiative, and more than 2 million Belgians heard the call to change the world during Fair Trade Week.
