Inspiration
Under the rapid development of globalization, producers in developing countries are constantly being oppressed. In response to various trade inequities, the Fair Trade movement is launched.
The unequal distribution of power between producers and merchants is one source of problems. Because small providers have difficulty accessing market information and are too small to find buyers directly, they rely on middlemen to help them sell their products to international markets. Under this circumstance, some farmers cannot switch to growing other agricultural products and they are earning an unfair share of the profit.
Under Fair Trade, farmers can have a fair and stable income, enjoy adequate social recourse, and at the same time, make community development to improve their living standards.
However, there are obstacles in the way of promoting fair trade. One crucial pain point is the large price gap between fair-trade products and normal goods.
What it does
In our project, we are aiming at persuading the consumers about the value of certain fair trade products and explaining to them how the price gap is formed. To do so, we introduced workers in every link of the production chain, tell their personal stories to the customer with a QR code on the packaging. In doing so, we hope to build connections between workers and consumers, remind consumers of the power of choosing and show them how their choice will make a concrete difference.
How we built it
We primarily used Twine to build our website. In addition, we use CSS and Html to polish the styling of the website. We finally published our website by GitHub.
Challenges we ran into
When we were building the website, we faced two challenges. First, we use large amount of time to brainstorming and research for resources about Fair Trade. It is a relatively new concept for us. Second, we faced several technical issues when building our project, such as having difficulties to format pictures and made the desired layout. However, we were able to overcome the difficulties and finished the project.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
It is a great accomplishment that we built a complete website in 24 hours and we are proud for our initiative of helping lift our peers by supporting and promoting Fair Trade through the website we made.
What we learned
During the background knowledge of the fair trade organization, we learned more about the value of this movement and the ongoing conflict between profit and fairness. When reading through interviews with workers about all the problems in the coconut water industry, we understood how fair trade products are solving these problems which made people in developing countries suffer.
What's next for PeerLift
We hope to put it into practice, working with companies with fair trade products to help they promote sales and attract new consumers with an intriguing appeal.
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