Good Shepherd Trading Circle

A Different Way of Doing Business

The Good Shepherd Trading Circle grew out of my concern for a small group of Aboriginal women in country New South Wales. The women's hope was to translate their new sewing skills into a small business. In a town of 600 people on the Murray River, markets for textile products were difficult to find. In 1993 the Good Shepherd Sisters decided to assist by marketing shoulder bags - still to be seen on the shoulders of many Australian women.

From this small commercial venture arose the thought of Good Shepherd Sisters overseas promoting alternative employment and training opportunities for women. We made contacts and discovered great interest in doing business with Australia. Slowly the Good Shepherd Trading Circle was born. Creating and supporting employment for women, meanwhile providing skills development, is a major Good Shepherd concern in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Recently Sr Pamela Molony RGS and I visited Good Shepherd projects in the Philippines, including small bakeries, a successful jam-making concern, a sweet-making cooperative, soap-making enterprises and groups making cards for various occasions. A candle-making co-operative is staffed by women seeking an alternative to prostitution. We witnessed women making handmade paper stationery, and others weaving placemats, tablerunners and liturgical stoles. Shirts are sewn from flourbags bought at the local market; women crochet articles at home. Anyone familiar with Good Shepherd history in Australia will appreciate the impact of a small laundry cooperative. The one in Davao employs 19 women who run the operation mainly by hand, using only a small washer and a tiny presser.

A young woman weaves cloth (Thailand)

In Thailand the Good Shepherd Sisters run vocational training centres in Bangkok, Nong Khai and Huai Sai (a village 50 mks from Nong Khai). Nong Khai, in the north-east, is an area from which very young women are recruited for the sex trade in Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket. There is an urgent need to develop alternatives. Fatima Centre, a self-help group comprising 84 women from the Din Daeng slums, produces a range of toys, children's wear and homeware, amid Bangkok's notorious traffic. The women require markets for their sewing and embroidery products.

Since the Trading Circle began, we have received requests for inclusion from Indonesia - from the slums of Jakarta and from rural areas of central Java and Flores. Also from Ethiopia, poverty-stricken Paraguay and from the chaos of Sudan. In Peru, a group of 'internal refugees' knit jumpers and make earings. We have requests from both rural and urban slums in India, and from Sri Lanka.

Our policy is to buy goods at prices the producers deem fair, and to pay up-front. We add freight and duties and sell the goods without profit. Our hope is to keep prices low and to create a steady turnover.

Our efforts will have minimal impact on poverty elimination, the project to which the UN is dedicating 1996. Yet the Trading Circle does make a difference to a few women's lives. Being 'one voice in the crowd' or 'one brick in the wall' (to quote Judy Small) is important. And like other alternative trading companies we see fair trade as vital to the overall fight against global poverty.

The Good Shepherd Trading Circle needs outlets. We are happy to come and sell at parishes, community groups, retirement villages and other centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. We welcome help from those who will sell goods for us. And if anyone is willing to lend us a shop, particularly in Brisbane or Sydney, this would be wonderful.

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