KEY POINTS:
• Trade opens our eyes to the way people in other countries
live and work
• Understanding and respecting others helps us appreciate
our own choices
• Not everyone has the economic standards that we enjoy,
so their priorities and standards are different from ours and
they can’t always afford to be concerned about the same
issues that we are concerned about
• We have to balance our concerns with the economic and
social realities of other countries in our trade interactions
with them
Background:
The Village of San Antonio Chacaya
The
village of San Antonio Chacaya on the shores of Lake Atitlan
in Guatemala is in an area of the country that was at the
center of an often-brutal civil war that lasted from 1958
to 1978. The majority of the people are poor farmers who pick
coffee on a nearby farm or on their own small plots, raise
subsistence crops like beans and corn, and generally live
in conditions that have remained unchanged for decades.
The
Guatemalan coffee export firm, Pamplona, discussed the possibility
of some sort of help for this area with a main customer, Seattle’s
Best Coffee. An agreement was eventually made to help workers
in a neighboring town, Santiago de Atitlan, by paying pickers
living in the community a premium for taking extra care with
the crop. That premium would be paid into a community improvement
fund. A specific amount of coffee was contracted for, and
as long as the pickers did their job, the community would
earn $2,500 U.S. per year towards improvement projects that
they would select. The Vashon Island Coffee Foundation was
created to administer the money for the community projects.
After
several years of improvements, Santiago succeeded in getting
more help from the central government, and so the program
was moved to Chacaya, a smaller and even poorer community
nearby. In the five years that this program has been in place,
the community of Chacaya has built a new school, bought windows,
furniture and schoolbooks for the school, added a spring-fed
community water system so the village does not have to use
lake water for drinking and cooking, and has paved a road
so the kids do not have to walk up a muddy path to go to school.
Some
of the projects have not been easy. The water system cost
much more than the $2,500 annual budget, and some in the community
were resentful that the rich Americans didn’t just give
them the money needed to complete the project. The owner who
was originally going to donate the land where the spring was
located demanded a lot of money and a new spring had to be
found. The well diggers kept walking off the job because the
community was hostile to them. The first phase of the project
could not bring water to every house, and so most of the community
refused to help dig trenches for the pipes.
Finally,
the teachers in the school persuaded their students to help
dig the trenches, and the adults eventually followed. Instead
of building everything at once or not at all, the community
learned that there was a future and that the help would continue.
Today,
San Antonio Chacaya has a thriving school that has daytime
classes for young children and afternoon classes for secondary
students. Most houses have clean running water near their
front door and the women of the village use some of the time
that they used to spend hauling water to help keep the village
clean. A new paved road makes it easier for the students to
get to school. And the entire community has the pride of knowing
that they earned every bit of these improvements, and that
they determined what each of the improvements would be.
The
community is still a poor farming community with a lifestyle
that is much the same as most of Central America Mayan culture—hard
labor, little in the way of modern conveniences and limited
opportunities for employment. But the changes that have been
possible by the involvement and commitment of the Vashon Island
Coffee Foundation have greatly improved the lives in the community.
Activity:
What Are Corporations Doing To Be Responsible Citizens? (8th
Honors and up)
Think
What are some of the companies whose products you buy that
are involved in international trade?
Research
Through web sites, email, snail mail, telephone or library
resources, find out what these companies are doing to help
overseas communities that they source their products from
and in local communities where they sell their goods. Find
out about their corporate ethics and environmental policies,
if they have them.
Discuss
What
are different companies doing?
Do you agree or disagree with what they are doing?
Do you think they are doing enough?
Would you pay a little more for the products that you buy
if you knew that the money was going to help someone in
another country live a better life?
Act
Write to the companies that you admire and tell them that
you support their actions and that you will continue to buy
their products and services because you like what they are
doing. Present their responses to the class.
Write
to the companies that you buy products from that do not appear
to be doing enough—or anything—to help the communities
that they source their products from and let them know that
you think they should be doing more. Present their responses
to the class.
What
other organizations are there that combine assistance with
self-help?
One example is Habitat for Humanity, at http://www.habitat.org
How
can you be involved in these programs (donations, fund raising,
volunteering your time)?
Additional
resources
Explore other resources to learn more about programs for “Corporate
Social Responsibility.”
Some
examples:
Business for Social Responsibility at http://www.bsr.org/
Good Money, an interesting directory at http://www.goodmoney.com/directry.htm
The Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire at http://www.csrwire.com/
IKEA, a global retailer with a strong ethics and environment
policy at http://www.ikea-usa.com
The Natural Step at http://www.naturalstep.org,
an organization focus on sustainable development
Resource Guide to Corporate Social Responsilblity at WCIT
WEB: http://www.wcit.org/resources/publications/pub_intro.htm
Suggestions
for Assessment
Assess as for Community Service, Senior Project.
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