Our Background, Mission, Strategy and Team

Background

 

Most of the world’s poorest people live in rural communities, where there are no formal trainers, teachers, mission or development workers. Even the largest international agencies cannot place workers in every poor community, so about 25% of the world’s population still live in severe poverty, with little or no opportunity to develop their full potential or meet basic family needs. The poor are amazingly resilient and enterprising – they have to be to survive at all – but most need relevant  information and training to help to reduce their poverty.

"Trade must be a prominent part of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, given its importance in structural economic transformation."   (The Overseas Development Institute London Sept 2014)

Research and our surveys of the needs of the poorest people confirmed the greatest need to tackle poverty effectively, is to provide commercial ‘know how’ in appropriate forms, to assist development of sustainable income to meet basic family needs.

The principles of trading are global so the rapidly increasing global access to the internet was seen as the best way of helping tackle poverty, anywhere.

Aid for Trade was started as a pilot internet resource project in 2007 Collaborative partnerships were quickly developed in six countries, to establish microenterprises for job creation and as a learning experience of what could be achieved without the cost or ‘carbon footprint’ of overseas travel.

We are now confident that using the internet to provide  specially developed free training programmes and links to other useful existing resources is now a proven, cost effective, environmentally friendly and an innovatory approach to tackling poverty, anywhere!

The global market growth of smart phone and tablets is rapidly increasing internet access and we have needed to modify our website resources to be ‘smart phone friendly’.

 

Our Mission and Strategy

While we are pleased to help people of any faith or none, Churches are located at the heart of very many of the poorest  communities,  so our strategy is to offer specially developed programmes to equip churches, mission and charity workers  to help communities tackle poverty, through income generation and improve personal and community wellbeing. Illiteracy is a major socio-economic problem in many developing countries and our forward strategy is to develop audio podcasts of our programmes suitable for radio broadcasting.

If you would like to know more about our Christain ethos please visit our other website www.missionaid.info

We support:

Equal Opportunities, High Integrity, Organic Production, Environmental Protection, Appropriate Technology, Health and Safety at Work, Fair Trade Principles and a 'Quadruple Bottom Line' (Profit, social investment, environmental concern and spiritual awareness)

Our Team

U.K. TRUSTEES

Mike Tyler		Founder  and CEO.  Arising from a business career and ten years practical development work, with very poor rural communities in Romania and Albania, Mike saw the opportunity  to use the internet to reach and help many more people.  Surveys and research confirmed the potential and Aid for Trade was started as a pilot project in 2007 and became a formal UK registered charity, The Aid for Trade Foundation in 2013.
Klaas ("KJ") Duursma		A former church leader now running a website design company.
Larry Kraft		A global mission leader and Internet research specialist.
Sandy Medway		A Christian social entrepreneur with wide charity experience.

OUR OVERSEAS ASSOCIATE PARTNERS AND CONSULTANTS

We have local associate  partners in eleven countries helping us develop and trial our online resources and lead selected microenterprise start up as potential models for replication elsewhere. 

 We are always pleased to make new contacts.
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