Fairtrade Impact

Why is Fair Trade Important in Palestine

Fair trade is important in Palestine because marginalized producers are particularly vulnerable operating under the military occupation and blockade. Fair trade practices facilitate access to resources, the wider marketplace, and helps producers to overcome movement restrictions, imposed by checkpoints and permit regimes, which prevent them from trading their crafts easily.

Find out more about fair trade here

Sunbula is a Guaranteed Fair Trade Member organization of WFTO. Regularly audited based on WFTO’s guarantee system, we are committed to upholding the 10 principles of fair trade.

Source: WFTO

How Sunbula’s Fair Trade Model Works

With every purchase:

75% goes to the producer groups to cover raw material, wages, and operations

25% goes to Sunbula to cover business operations, capacity-building support for producer groups

As a fair trade organisation, Sunbula is committed to monitoring and evaluating our fair trade processes. We use relevant insights to improve our strategies, planning, decision-making, and standards-setting for our fair trade handicraft and food production.

Delivering Real Impact

SInce 2005, we've empowered over 25 sustainable craft producer groups and over $179,000 in revenue has been given back to them.

We provide capacity building support in other aspects of business management, such as bookkeeping. 4 community income-generation projects have been established with our support:

1. Haneen Project

Established in 2007 as a result of Sunbula’s product development training for the women in Balata refugee camp in the West Bank, the women formed an embroidery group to utilize their newly-acquired skills for income-generation. In addition to training, Sunbula helped to outfit a new workshop for the project.

2. Tahhadi

A wool-felting project established in 2017 in Al-Mehtwish Bedouin community in the Al-Khan Al-Ahmar area, east of Jerusalem. Sunbula helped the community to set up a workshop, and provided skills training in wool-felting and the basics of running a community enterprise.

3. Beit Doqu Development Society

This jewelry-making project was started in 2010 to provide a new economic opportunity for the women in Beit Doqu village in the central West Bank. Sunbula trained the women in jewelry-making skills and established a new workshop.

4. Khayma 35

Based in the Abu Nuwar Bedouin community, Khayma 35 is a silk-screen printing workshop that was established in 2018 with the support of Sunbula. Khayma 35 has since evolved into Abu Nuwar Bedouin Charitable Society, the first NGO by and for Bedouin women in the West Bank.

Ethical consumption

Ethical consumption is practised through the buying of ethically-made products that support small scale manufacturers and local artisans, protect animals and the environment, and through boycotting products that violate human rights or damage the environment. Within the context of how Sunbula’s crafts are produced by Palestinian artisans in marginalised communities that struggle under occupation, we work towards advocating for ethical consumerism.