Richard Adams (Traidcraft)

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Richard Adams OBE (born October 28, 1946) is the British founder of the UK fair trade organisations Tearcraft and Traidcraft and of a number of social enterprises which promote ethical business.

He has degrees in sociology (Durham University), theology (University of London) and business administration (Newcastle University) which also confered an honorary Doctor of Civil Law on him in 2005.

After visiting small farmers in Gujarat, India, in 1973 he established an agricultural imports company in London with distribution to the main wholesale markets. In 1974 this business began importing crafts from farming communities in Bangladesh, following which he founded Tearcraft which became the marketing arm of the UK relief and development charity, Tearfund. In 1979 Richard established the independent company Traidcraft, which became a plc in 1984, offering the first 'alternative' and socially orientated public share issue in the UK. In 1989 Adams convened the steering committee of what became the UK's Fairtrade Foundation, based on the Dutch Max Havelaar Foundation. He was a member of its board from 1992 - 1999. In 1994 Adams founded the Creative Consumer Co-operative, through which Out of this World, Britain's first chain of organic grocery stores with an explicit ethical, fair trade, social and environmental agenda, were launched.

Adams was a director of the UK Social Investment Forum 1992-1996; Chair of the Student Christian Movement 1994-1997 and, with Mark Hayes, a co-initiator and founding director of the social investment society, Shared Interest. He is an honorary Fellow of Glasgow University's Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting and received an OBE in 2000 for services to ethical business. He was appointed by the UK Government in 2001 as one of 24 UK members of the Brussels–based Economic and Social Committee of the European Union.

Bibliography

Who Profits? (1989) ISBN 0 7459 1606 6