Projects
Piloting a Fair Trade Tourism Certification Scheme.
Fair Trade Tourism (FTT) is an emerging method that applies the principles of sustainable and responsible tourism into the economy. FTT proposes alternatives to mass tourism and other forms of travel that negatively affect destinations and their inhabitants. FTT is referred to tourism that is responsible to people, the environment and earth. FTT describes operations that respect: (1) the working environment (e.g. fair wages, equal job opportunity, safe and clean working environment); (2) the use of natural resources and minimizes the operations’ environmental footprint; and (3) Jordanian traditions and culture.
The National Tourism Strategy (NTS) of Jordan explicitly calls for sustainability in the tourism economy. Up until today, there are no formal mechanisms to monitor and verify the sustainability of tourism operations in Jordan. FTT can play a significant role in this area, ensuring sustainable tourism practices and thus thriving towards the mission of the NTS.
In light of the potential for FTT to work towards a sustainable tourism economy in Jordan and thrive towards meeting the mission of the NTS, Fair Trade Jordan (FTJ), with the support of USAID Siyaha, will pilot and develop a FTT certification scheme that works on tourism market chains, on mainstreaming the ethics of fair trade into the tourism economy and on attempting to channel tourism benefits in favor of small-scale service providers in Jordan.
Preparing an interactive online website that includes a wide variety of products and services provided by local cooperatives and NGOs in Jordan.
In September 2007, FTJ signed an agreement with the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) to implement a unique national project that looks to assess impacts and the sustainability of income generating community development projects in Jordan. The assessment will be based on these community development projects’ socio-economic and environmental impacts and will create modern marketing channels for these producers and service providers to access corporate clients in Jordan and build their capacity to meet corporate demand.
The main project outputs include:- A network and database of small producers and service providers established under the umbrella of Fair Trade Jordan. The database will grade producers and service providers according to basic quality and fair trade standards.
- Marketing channels adopted and functional to facilitate marketing of those producers and service providers under Fair Trade Jordan’s umbrella.
- Information and experience exchange between small producers and service providers and larger businesses and corporations established and maintained.
- Interactive online database of producers and service providers, their products and services and a grading system according to quality and fair trade standards
- Bi-lingual fair-trade procurement handbook
The handbook contains essential information about the actual producer and service provider, a description of the product and service, prices and the grading system based on the criteria outlined in activity one.