The face of Max Havelaar: elected as a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos in year 2000, Paola Ghillani is a pharmacist and a manager who left the world of big business and followed her personal ideals.
| Auteur | Heddema, Renske |
| Fonction | Business |
As CEO of Max Havelaar Switzerland, a foundation for global fair trade, she succeeded in making the organisation self-supporting within a few years. Swiss News talks to Paola Ghillani, a manager who proved that sustainable trade is a win-win situation for all parties involved.
Swiss News: Miss Ghillani, how has 2004 been for Max Havelaar Switzerland?
Ghillani: It has been a wonderful year. In the past six years we have been growing by 30 to 40 per cent per year and 2004 was no exception. The main reason is that Coop, one of the two big retailers, has made a full switch to Max Havelaar bananas. At present, Max Havelaar bananas have a market share of 30 per cent in Switzerland.
Max Havelaar gives out certificates for fair trade. How does that work?
"We are a non-profit foundation, created in 1992 by six Swiss organisations for development. Our objective is to give consumers access to the market of fair trade.
In the past, so-called World Shops had done pioneer work in this field, but they never succeeded to get out of their niche. That's why these six organisations decided to set up a special label for fair trade. They borrowed the name from the Dutch, who had started Max Havelaar in 1989, naming it after the book "Max Havelaar" written by the Dutch writer Multatuli. The book deals with the social injustice in nineteenth century Indonesia, where local coffee producers were exploited at a large scale. Coffee was the first product to be labelled.
Max Havelaar is not a brand, we do not buy a physical product; we give out a label. Controlling and monitoring the trade process in order to open the market for disadvantaged producers and workers is what Max Havelaar is all about. At the other side of the chain, we make consumers sensitive for fair trade products.
Sounds like a huge task. Where de you begin?
As a civil society movement we were launched on the basis of the collective conscience that fair trade is a necessity. The only way small producers and workers in development countries can live with their families is to give them a fair price for their products, for their work.
In terms of business model, I run Max Havelaar Switzerland as a company. Since 2001, we have been independent from our stakeholder organisations, making a profit. I want to give the example that fair trade is a sound business model, not an act of charity. The profit we make by giving out licenses is reinvested into new products. In this respect, we play a pioneer role in...
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