Traidcraft is founded on Christian principles. They seek to live out the Christian faith through their mission to fight poverty through trade. Since 1979 they’ve been working for trade justice for growers and producers in the poorest countries around the world. Traidcraft is a pioneer of the fair trade movement in the UK where they jointly founded the Fairtrade Foundation. Their activities also include overseas development programmes, trade policy, campaigns and trade justice.

Traidcraft believes that to achieve change they need to combine a range of activities:

• Trading directly with producers
• Scaling up the learning from that activity (with a wider range of beneficiaries and a focus on local markets as well as international trade)
• Addressing the need for wider structural and policy change through modelling good business practices
• Mobilising consumers to influence government and corporate behaviour.

To carry out these activities they work through two financially and legally distinct entities - a trading company and a development charity.

Over the years they have demonstrated their ability to have impact and influence that far exceeds the scale of their activities, and have established themselves as a global leader in making trade work for the people in the developing world.