This worldwide event issued from the call launched at the International Trade Campaign Conference held in Delhi, India in the year 2003. The various activities that took place from Peru to Ghana and from Germany to Bangladesh expressed the rejection of the current economic model in which profit takes precedence over human welfare.

Global Week of Action sought to influence on the agendas of the G8, IMF, WTO, World Bank, multinational corporations and governments of North and South and challenge, at the same time, the regional and bilatereal agreements such as NAFTA inLatin America and the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

 ifPeople and Fair Trade

Fair Trade is a business model that emerged as a response to the falling prices of agricultural commodities and the effect this has on small farmers.  The goal of Fair Trade is to provide disadvantaged producers a chance to earn a fair return for their work, ensure continuity of income and decent working and living conditions through sustainable development.

Inspired by the Fair Trade movement, ifPeople has created a model and standard to build a partnership with IT professionals. Ifpeople´s FairSource aims at developing collaborative long-term relationships with its partners through a process that generates trust, abilities, professionalism and responsibility.

FairSource is an innovative extension of the principles of Fair Trade to trade in services. FairSource is a standard that any socially responsible company can apply for more just and sustainable relations in trade. This model and standard is available in both English and Spanish at ifPeople´s website.

           Since Tirza Hollenhorst, co-founder of ifPeople, presented FairSource at Stanford University and a conference in England last year, this innovative business model has received lots of attention. This year, FairSource will occupy a central place in the United Nations conference on Human Rights and Entrepreneurship scheduled for August in New York. At this conference, Christopher Johnson, ifPeople´s co-founder and CEO, will present FairSource and report on ifPeople´s experience in using this model