History

Solidaridad was launched in 1969 by the Catholic bishops as an advent campaign in aid of Latin America. In the 1970s, protestant churches joined Solidaridad and a formal ecumenical organization emerged in 1976. At those days this model was a unique form of collaboration between the Dutch churches in their programmes for development aid in Latin America.

Unfortunately in the nineties inter-church cooperation became under pressure and the breakdown of ecumenical collaboration started. In the end the churchbased foundation of Solidaridad’s work gradually eroded. Especially the Catholic Church became increasingly inward-looking and less inclined to see responsibility for the world as a task. The growing conservatism within the churches led to the breaking of the ties. The era of 40 years of eucumenical cooperation ended in 2010. But to date still many local Christian communities are committed to Solidaridad’s work.

International network organization

The developments in the relationships with the churches created new opportunities for Solidaridad. An international network organization is being built up, both in terms of governance as well as in terms of operations. This change of structure will give our partners in the South a prominent say in the policymaking processes. The implementation of that policy will be better underpinned by the knowledge and experience of local partners. Moreover, the implementation of the policies will be decentralized and delegated to the regional expertise centres, thus making a better use of local expertise.

Solidaridad The Netherlands is to be one player in a network of nine Regional Expertise Centres (RECs) in various parts of the world. In the process, the organization’s centre of gravity is shifted from North to South. The offices in the South take over the entire project cycle. Solidaridad The Netherlands will apply itself to market development in the North, fundraising to cover the network budget and publicity campaigns to involve consumers, citizens and businessess in the taks of making the international economy more sustainable.

Fair Trade

In 1988, Solidaridad was the founding father of the Max Havelaar label for coffee for the Dutch market. This was the starting point of Fair Trade certification, directly leading to the international standard of Fair Trade (FLO). After having introduced fair trade coffee Solidaridad initiated in 1996 a fair trade scheme for bananas. For this purpose, Solidaridad set up the fruit company Agrofair. This company is co-owned by farmers and supplies its fair trade labelled fruit to supermarkets across Europe. At the turn of this century Solidaridad established Kuyichi jeans, a trendy sustainable fashion brand that is sold in over than 500 leading stores across Europe.

CSR-models

Corporate social responsibility is developing at a fast rate. Solidaridad is building on this together with UTZ CERTIFIED, the sustainable label for  coffee, cocoa and tea. MADE-BY, the label for clean clothes introduced in 2004, is another of Solidaridad’s initiatives. Solidaridad is also intensively involved in CSR models such as Social Accountability International (SAI) and the Business Social Compliance Inititiative (BSCI), and is active in Round Tables for responsible soy, palm oil, sugarcane and cotton. An increasing number of large and small companies, brands and retailers, all over the world are now working with Solidaridad on sustainable chain development.