USFT's Purpose, Vision, and Values

Purpose: USFT is a collaboration of students and youth working in solidarity with cooperative communities to promote fair trade principles, products and policies. Consciousness raising, leadership development and capacity building stand at the core of our grassroots organizing.

Vision:

We envision a world in which the global economy is based on human relationships, transparency, democracy, equitable access, and shared power through cooperative organizations.

Values:

The following are a set of values that guide our actions. We strive to embody these principles in our work, our coalition, and ourselves.

1. Fair Trade: We work towards the key elements of Fair Trade, locally and globally. Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, accountability, and respect, which seeks greater equity in trade. It contributes to sustainable development by securing rights and offering better trading conditions to marginalized producers and workers.

2. Anti-Oppression: We struggle to understand and to actively combat racism, classism, gender discrimination, heterosexism, ageism and other forms of oppression. We must be mindful of and challenge the elements of privilege and power not only on a global level, but also within our own organizational structures and ourselves.

3. Listening to Understand: We work to build positive relationships between people and across boundaries. We strive to listen and promote understanding and dialogue across difference.

4. Guidance by Local Knowledge: We strive to remain rooted in the local experience and action of students, producers, NGOs, and businesses working to expand awareness of and demand for Fair Trade.

5. Awareness of Context: We recognize the context, history, and landscape of the Fair Trade movement in which we work, and we recognize other initiatives working towards social justice.

6. Diversity: We respect and value diversity in our work, our organization, and the Fair Trade movement as a whole. Diversity of representation, such as of ethnicity, gender, and class, as well as of individual experience and perspective, is an essential component of validating the Student Fair Trade Movement.

7. Mutual Exchange: We value a mutual exchange of information and experience. We strive to nurture constructive dialogues between everyone involved in expanding Fair Trade.

8. Making Connections: We strive to make connections between Fair Trade Certified products and other initiatives that support local economies and cooperative forms of production and trade, and initiatives that shape a fair global economy that promote sustainable livelihoods.

9. Sustainability: We organize for a more sustainable form of global trade that benefits producers as well as the natural environment. We believe that protecting the human environment is a critical empowerment and human rights issue on the ground and in our communities.

10. Celebration: We celebrate each success, large and small, to build hope in the struggle for a global economy that nurtures human beings and communities.