People are often a bit surprised to see that we sell footballs! Perhaps because they don’t fit with the idea of a fair trade product. It’s probably because, like me, they never really thought about where footballs are made, or how.
In fact 70% of the worlds footballs are made in the town of Sialkot in Pakistan, in a process that still has a real handmade element. Rather than a shiny automated production line you’ll find people machine stitching, or painstakingly glueing pieces together before putting each football individually into a thermal bonding machine.
All the balls for the major tournaments are made in Sialkot but, as you might have guessed, no matter how expensive the ball, the pay and working conditions really don’t differ much. A big chunk of the price of a branded ball goes on sponsorship and advertising and very little gets back to the workers themselves. Many of them live at a subsistence level with little support when things go wrong.
But there’s a different way of doing things. Waseem Lodhi runs Bola Gema, a successful business making high quality balls which also has workers at its heart. Bola Gema is Fairtrade Certified, which means it has signed up to the ten principles of fair trade and put those values into action. As well as fair pay and conditions it means making sure that there’s no child labour involved, something that was rife in Sialkot 20 years ago, or ensuring that female worker s(such as Arzah Begum, above) are treated equally and with respect.
It also means being there for workers when there’s an emergency. When the covid pandemic hit many other factories closed or laid off workers, but Bola Gema trained workers in how to stay safe, and gave them safety equipment. When workers got sick they were supported and helped with hospital bills giving them peace of mind that they wouldn’t be pushed into debt. The company kept paying workers when they were unable to come into work for two months, and as soon as it was possible they reopened the factory, despite a huge slump in football sales worldwide at the time.
Bola Gema is now working with Bala Sport, a UK company that has a real passion to bring fair trade sports balls to this country. They pay a 15% Fairtrade premium for community benefit on top of the price of the balls which the workers themselves decide how to spend. The result is a community shop selling discounted groceries at around a third off the market price, a huge benefit.
Footballs are for competitive games or just for fun, but either way they should have fairness at the heart. Let’s make a world that works for everyone.
📍 Available now at Harrogate Fair Trade – come and find yours in-store, or shop here.
