Traidcraft's strategy: 2006 - 2011

1. Increasing Traidcraft's impact on poverty

We aim to treble the value of our purchases from fair trade suppliers in the developing world, and to treble the volume of our charitable project and advocacy work.

To achieve this, we will:

• Increase our sales through extending our supporter base, developing new styles of commercial partnership, and using the potential of the internet to the full.
• Broaden our product ranges, in particular by sourcing new types of non-food product and introducing them into mainstream markets.
• Give particular priority to developing new trading relationships in Africa, where the challenges of poverty are greatest.
• Focus the overseas activity of our charity on East Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia, establishing Traidcraft offices in each region.
• Build up the scale of our project work, attracting funding from individual supporters in the UK and from governments, international bodies and trusts around the world.
• Improve the quality of our impact through our trading and development activities.
• Increase the scale of our producer support programme finding better ways of helping them build resilient businesses, and ensuring the benefits of fair trade flow through to transforming individual lives.
• Find improved ways of measuring and demonstrating the quality and nature of our impact on the lives of individuals and communities, continually learning how to make our activities more effective.
• Increase Traidcraft's campaigning and communications activity, to keep trade justice and fair trade issues on the public agenda, influence policy makers and attract wider public support.
• Develop stronger local networks of expertise, ensuring our activities take full account of local issues and strengthening the local resources available to support producers from poor communities.

2. Providing leadership

We will further strengthen our reputation as the UK's leading organisation dedicated to making trade work for the poor.

We will:

• Improve the fair trade and environmental standards within our own activities.
• Encourage good practices among the wider fair trade movement and other development organisations as well as among commercial participants in fair trade.
• Continue to be an innovator and pioneer in both trading and developmental activities.
• Bring fair trade into new sectors and markets, and identify more effective approaches to trade and development.
• Promote the example of Traidcraft plc as a successful trading operation that demonstrates the viability of ethical business.
• Continue to pioneer the development and implementation of social accounting mechanisms as a way of improving the impact of business upon the developing world.

3. Strengthening the Traidcraft community

Traidcraft is an inclusive and international community of action that challenges injustice in trade.

We will:

• Build a community that is passionate, pioneering, practical and principled.
• Build partnership and strong relationships with, and between, our producers, staff, shareholders, supporters, customers and partner organisations, helping each group to understand more about the others and how, together, we can increase our impact on poverty.
• Extend Traidcraft's supporter base, recognising our particular role in mobilising the UK Christian community for the fight against poverty.
• Build awareness and enthusiasm for our work among younger people.

These are the outline of the key elements of our new strategy.

We hope they will help you understand our aims and approach, and inspire you to work with us towards establishing a world freed from the scandal of poverty.