Equal Exchange was founded in 1986 to create a new approach to trade, one that engages consumers and builds honest and Fair Trade relationships through cooperative principles. To learn more, read Our Story.

Our Mission

Equal Exchange's mission is to build long-term trade partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relationships between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate, through our success, the contribution of worker co-operatives and Fair Trade to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable world.

Our Guiding Principles

• Trade directly with democratically organized small farmer cooperatives.
• Facilitate access to credit for producer organizations.
• Pay producers a guaranteed minimum price that provides a stable source of income as well as improved social services.
• Provide high quality food products.
• Support sustainable farming practices.
• Build a democratically-run cooperative workplace.
• Develop more environmentally-sound business practices.

Our Vision

In June 2006, Equal Exchange's worker-owners approved a powerful vision for Equal Exchange's next 20 years:

A Vision for Equal Exchange

There will be...
A vibrant mutually cooperative community
of two million committed participants
trading fairly one billion dollars a year
in a way that transforms the world.

Vivid Description of the Vision Realized

Our vision is to create and foster a deep and far reaching cooperative model, with Equal Exchange serving as the engine of a complex economic network of two million producers, workers, investors, merchants, activists, and consumers who are using their land, labor, capital and votes to create the world they want to live in and leave for their children.

Participants work together in an effective global network of mutually beneficial trade that supports and extends sustainable agriculture, transforms relationships among people, and once again transforms national and international trade.

People in this web participate knowingly and value the contributions made by other participants. For this diverse, committed community, these economic transactions serve as a source of hope.

This extended Equal Exchange network fosters cooperative development. It does so through: new lines of fairly traded products; broader economic participation by stakeholders; and the development of new entities and organizational relationships. The network’s products and services touch the lives of consumers on a daily basis.

Activist consumers function as movement ambassadors, thinking, questioning, and challenging the status quo. They teach new economic models, take action, win elections, and build something new while challenging the old. To strengthen communities and reduce poverty they support grassroots development by extending opportunities to small business owners and small-scale producers worldwide.

Equal Exchange continues to set an example as a world leader in fairness, ethical commerce, and economic democracy.