Q&A: Norway's honorary counsel on making fair trade, development work in Armenia

More than two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, parts of Armenia appear to remain stuck in time, while others have surged ahead. There are clear signs of progress: the country’s national poverty rate has almost halved since the 1990s and the capital Yerevan bustles with lively sidewalk cafes. But brutalist Soviet buildings and sculptures are also scattered throughout the capital city and the landlocked country’s rural provinces. It’s there, also, that a lack of development is most evident, says Timothy Straight, the honorary consul of Norway and Finland and the founder of the Homeland Development Initiative Foundation, HDIF. Straight, a 60-year-old American and native of Ohio, launched HDIF, the only fair trade organization in the former Soviet Union, five years ago. Since then, Straight and his small team have worked with 200 Armenian women to produce and sell handmade toys, baby shoes, kitchenware and other goods that will soon be exported to a broad international market, including the United States. Straight spoke with Devex in HDIF’s Yerevan office last week to discuss the transitions that Armenia and he, professionally, both continue to undergo. Here is a condensed, lightly edited version of the conversation. Armenia is not a high-profile country in the international development and political world. How does this influence the work you are trying to do, and when you try to broaden the conversation outside of Armenia? It does not get attention.There are so many people who want to help, but are not quite sure how to do it. I spend a lot of time educating them on what things cost here and what it takes to get things going. We know the market and what is possible to make here. We have the producers, we have the years and years of experience and other people are welcome to try, but i get a bit irritated when people come in and say it needs to be 40 percent cheaper. That is not how we work. That is not fair trade, and if you want to work that way you go to China. What was the gap here that you wanted to fill? Poverty, just poverty. How can you expect a person to go to a training and learn about their human rights if they don’t have a job? How do you expect a woman to leave her husband if she is being abused and she does not have a job? How do you expect to solve any of the problems of this country if there are no jobs? The root of everything for me is in job creation. I have been doing this for five, six years and we are growing and growing, and it is great. But Armenia has taken off in a different direction, with IT, technology. People are studying abroad. They are learning different languages. But there are women in this age group, 35 to 60s, whose lives were set when the Soviet Union fell apart. And then [there was the] war [the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan from the late 1980s until 1994], and all that, so maybe she got married, she had her first kids during the war and she doesn't have much of a chance to change her life at this point. Do you find that shift has been difficult for some women to take on with this new type of work you are introducing with your foundation? They are doing as best as they can within their experience base. Their experience base is war and conflict and, ‘My husband is away, he is in Russia and I have to do the garden, take care of the pigs or the chickens.’ They know how to crochet, they know how to knit, they know how to embroider, they know how to sew. We just need to give them the design, and more importantly we need to give them the skills about electronic invoices, about deadlines, about quality control. Things they have never had to deal with. Many of them have not had structure to their lives. There was no water, there were no roads, there was nothing. And in this office, we are seeing the results of these years in a less structured period. When I came [to Armenia] in the 2000s I was one of about 10 landcruisers in the city that had no stoplights, no stop signs. It has changed a lot, but for these women in the village, not so much. The husband is still in Russia. They are still struggling to make ends meet. The goal is to have food on the table and educate the kids, so we just want to come in and give them that opportunity. How much income do you hope these projects can bring to these women? This is always going to be supplemental income. We have done a food basket analysis -- looking at their caloric intake -- and we are aiming at approximately 40 percent more than the minimum wage. Thirty percent of kids in Armenia do not receive enough calories because they are stunted. That is horrifying. Domestic violence has gone down. That is improving - that is a huge issue. So, we are not an employment agency, but we are easing their situation. What would you recommend to someone interested taking a similar path in fair trade work? Come and talk to me and I will tell you how hard it is. If you still want to do it, I will help you. What are the biggest challenges, more specifically? It is just a horribly complicated system and you are trying to introduce it in a country that does not know or does not care - a, ‘why should I,’ culture. And that is difficult and it is expensive. In your case, you’ve really immersed yourself in Armenia and dedicated a good portion of your life and career to working here. Yes. One thing rings in my ears. Diasporans and non-Armenians come and things happen and they get frustrated. A taxi driver ripped you off. Bad service at the restaurant. I will always remember having been here two, three years and I was in a small village with my interpreter from here and I just said, ‘I can’t believe this,’ or something and she said, ‘You really hate Armenia,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God. No.’ But I will never forget that. You have to be really careful, or they will say, ‘This guy is an idiot.’