By Fr. Shay Cullen
All of us want to live in a just society where cheating, exploitation and corruption have no place. Almost everyone wants a society that respects the values of the Gospel, and where all are treated equally with respect and dignity and people help each other like Good Samaritans.
This is the society all of us should strive to build while resisting the temptation to abuse and exploit others. Some people fall into the dark pit of corruption and dishonesty, and their wrongdoings damage the lives of the innocent and hurt God’s creation. Human trafficking, illegal logging and burning of fossil fuels damage the environment, causing global warming and threatening the future of mankind. World temperatures increased again in 2024, exceeding the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold.
Good consumers who believe in protecting the Earth strive to counter these threats by working for economic and social justice and believing that fairness and equality will overcome injustice. They buy sustainable mango products produced through the Preda Fair Trade Project (www.predafairtrade.net) in shops and supermarkets in Europe. These products are made with concern for the environment and to help reduce global warming.
Preda Fair Trade and its supporters have provided 561 Aeta mango farmers and their families in 16 communities in Zambales with 10 clean-water supply projects and community training seminars on the rights of women and children. Since 2001, this project has distributed as many as 79,599 mango and other fruit tree saplings measuring 4 feet tall to these communities.
For consumers, fairness means being willing to pay a fair price that supports fair wages. They believe in buying products from producer-groups like Preda Fair Trade that share profits and give social benefits, education and training to producers and their children, as well as teach them to protect the environment. This keeps children of poor families in school and prevents human traffickers from recruiting them for exploitation.
Customers of fair-trade products help prevent human trafficking. One of the worst kinds of this is the sale of unwanted babies. In the Philippines, unwanted teenage pregnancies have reached an all-time high, and many young girls are selling their babies online even before giving birth. In 2022, Singapore-based Channel NewsAsia did extensive undercover research that found and recorded many young women offering their babies, born or not, for sale on the internet, on street corners and through traders for as little as $100.
Many of these pregnant teenagers — some as young as 16 — are victims of domestic rape and abuse, and human traffickers get them into debt and force them to do sex work. The Preda Foundation, supported by Preda Fair Trade, is rescuing and healing many of them and saving their babies from abortionists or buyers.
In the Philippines, a family of five needs at least P13,872 every month for food to survive, according to government statistics. In 2023, the poverty rate was a huge 15.5 percent. This means that out of a population of 117.3 million Filipinos, about 17.54 million do not have enough money to feed and clothe themselves, let alone a newborn. They endure dire poverty in a nation where 10 percent of the population owns over 70 percent of the wealth. Most of the economy is controlled by wealthy dynastic families that also control the government.
Saving these vulnerable teenagers and preventing human trafficking by building supporting communities is the mission of Preda Fair Trade. The 561 Aeta farmers in 16 communities mentioned earlier that the project is helping have organized themselves into a European Union-certified organic mango fair trade association in Zambales and Bataan. Now, they seek buyers for their organic-certified cassava and ube flour and bananas.
Preda Fair Trade buys the Aeta farmers’ wild Pico and Indian mangoes — which would otherwise be rejected as unsalable — at fair prices. These mangoes are pulped into puree by a processor in Bulacan and shipped to Welt Partner in Germany in drums for use in many mango products, including mango chutney, jam, liqueur, apple-mango juice and vinegar.
The Aeta farmers receive a bonus, and with the help of donors, Preda Fair Trade has provided 10 villages with clean drinking water systems. The water is sourced from the mountain through a pipe to the village and stored in large stainless-steel tanks that have distribution lines around the village. This project supports 50 Aeta children in high school and college. This educational assistance keeps the children safe from human traffickers.
Some 127 mango farmers in the remote hills of Davao have also formed their fair trade association and sell their mangoes to Preda Fair Trade for high prices and receive bonuses and social and educational benefits. The carabao-variety mangoes they produce are peeled, sliced and dried, then shipped to Germany and Ireland, where they are sold in fair trade shops and supermarkets.
Preda Fair Trade donates its surplus earnings to support the Preda Foundation, a charitable organization that rescues trafficked and abused children and provides shelter, protection, healing therapy and legal help to get them justice. Preda children have testified and won an average of 20 convictions every year, with life sentences imposed on their traffickers and abusers over the past 26 years. In 2024, they convicted 27 in all.
Customers buying fair trade products act with justice and fairness. They have moral values and pay the just price for good-quality products. They avoid the cheapest products likely produced by exploitation and child or slave labor.
Fair traders are people of integrity and have faith in doing good for others, opposing wrongdoing and believing that they will win battles, however small, against injustice. “Faith without action is dead,” wrote St. James in the New Testament. That’s what fair traders strive for: a life that shows “faith in action.”
