Groundchange - The Story of Trade Aid

The local Trade Aid shop has become a ubiquitous feature of the New Zealand high street, offering craft and food products from trading partners throughout the developing world. The history of these shops is a remarkable story, which had its beginnings in the early 1970s when the founders of Trade Aid, Viv and Richard Cottrell, first travelled to India to work with Tibetan refugees. On their return to New Zealand the Cottrells began to import Tibetan rugs to help these refugees. This soon developed into a broader enterprise that aimed to help struggling farmers and artisans from the developing world gain access to our markets. From this small idealistic enterprise the Trade Aid movement has grown to a group of 28 shops that has engaged thousands of New Zealanders as staff and volunteers, and hundreds of thousands as customers. Trade Aid has changed the lives of many people in poor, often remote regions of the developing world. Groundchange explores how this movement has developed a homegrown trading model based on long-term partnership, fairness, transparency and commitment...