Welcome! This platform has been created for active members of the global organic cotton community to share conversations, knowledge and information about organic and fair-trade cotton.

It is open to all interested people having a stake in the organic and fair-trade cotton area. There is no fee to participate. Just register and your account will be activated for log-in. Once registered you have full access to all previous discussions.

Why Participate in this Space?

As a Member of the Global Organic Cotton Community Space, you can look forward to:

• quick responses to your questions on hot issues
• saving time gathering information
• staying up to date with the latest news
• being part of a constantly evolving network of people working in the same field of interest
• participating in shaping strategies in the global organic cotton sector
• key learnings and summaries of discussions held in topic-specific online dialogues
• Online Dialogues on Organic Cotton
• Our overall area of interest is “organic and fair-trade cotton”. Within this thematic area topics to be discussed are defined by participants themselves, based on their needs and interests.
   

Background

In recent years HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation, ICCO (Dutch Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation) and Textile Exchange (formerly known as Organic Exchange) intensified their collaboration in the area of organic and fair-trade cotton, in order to use synergies and work more efficiently by exchanging information and by learning from each others’ experiences.

They felt the need to have additional tools and processes to exchange views, opinions and experiences on their work, both among themselves and with other people working in the organic cotton sector. So they decided to establish and run a web platform to exchange knowledge and information on organic and fair-trade cotton complementing face to face meetings.

In 2008 Helvetas, ICCO and SECO (Swiss state secretariat for economic affairs) assured co-funding to bring the Global Organic Cotton Community Space into being. The web platform went live in June 2009 and is managed by the Organic & Fairtrade Competence Centre of Helvetas and by Textile Exchange.

Language of Online Dialogues

The main language is English, but participants can also contribute in Spanish or French. Discussions will occasionally be summarised in the three languages by the facilitator, but individual contributions cannot be translated.

Butthere are tools for translating web-pages into some of the more common international languages include: Babelfish and Google Translate. These tools will provide an idea of what is written but cannot be expected to be exact translations.

Code of Conduct

In principle the Global Organic Cotton Community is open to everybody. However, to make sure that everybody feels comfortable, we set up a code of conduct describing our principles:

• We mutually respect each other's individual perspective
• We assure that nobody is quoted (neither by the contributor's personal name nor by his or hers company's or organisation's name) in a written document without having given her or his written consent before.
• any use of information particularly where quoted verbatim (even if not attributed) should be avoided, as it can be more easily connected to a person by their knowledge.
• The library, the news section and the agenda should not be used to post any advertisements.

How to participate?

How to use the web platform? (pdf, 260KB) 

Flyer to announce the Global Organic Cotton Web Platform (pdf)

Corresponding Links

Community of Practice, a definition

HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation

ICCO

Textile Exchange (formerly known as Organic Exchange)

Organic & Fairtrade Competence Centre

SECO

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