Hi everyone, my name is Monica Lackman, and I’m the new Communications and Marketing Coordinator for Royal Bhaktapur’s U.S. venture. I’ve been mandated with the creative maintenance of this blog, and thus, over the next few months, you’ll hopefully be following along with the topics I hope to cover regarding Royal Bhaktapur as a fair trade oriented business, and as an advocate for poverty alleviation and economic justice.

Royal Bhaktapur was created not for the sake of making personal profit, but  for the sake of giving skilled craftspeople in Nepal an economic outlet through which to generate much needed income. You’ll hear hot topics these days about how we need to “fight against poverty”, and “promote global justice”, but what do such inspiring but ambiguous statements actually mean?

To an Economist, alleviating poverty means maximizing a country’s GDP and export potential. To an Education specialist, helping people out of poverty means providing them with quality schooling. Poverty is a nebulous issue, with numerous factors fueling it’s perpetuation throughout the world. The complications involved with Poverty’s existence make trying to find a “solution” that much more difficult and intangible.

Business is coming to play an increasingly prominent role in how people approach poverty. The Fair Trade movement focuses on working to facilitate locally based ways to provide financial freedom, through methods like business generation, vocational training and micro-enterprise.

Poverty is an issue that will be ever present on earth as long as there are imperfect humans who populate it. However, poverty alleviation can become a very realistic achievement if it is thought of in small ways through one community, one family and one person at a time.

Through the business empowering movements that promote concepts such as “Business as Mission” and “Fair Trade”, alleviating poverty around the world is becoming increasingly feasible. When people are provided with the tools needed to generate independent sources of income, business becomes a fantastic catalyst that affects numerous other threads in the fabric of our global community.