Verité

CONTACT:

44 Belchertown Road
Amherst, MA 01002
(413) 253-9227
www.verite.org

Heather White, Founder and President

DESCRIPTION:

Vérité, founded in 1995, is a relatively young organization that has opened up a strategically significant new niche for American philanthropy in the global economy, and very rapidly has made huge strides in developing it. Vérité here seeks donor-investors interested in supporting innovative human rights work, particularly affecting women and children. Expertise with very rapid growth management, preferably in a global arena, would also be extremely useful and gratefully received.

American companies increasingly outsource production to the developing world, to take advantage of lower labor costs. American values, however, still apply: American consumers prefer to buy products not produced by child labor, prison labor or sweatshop conditions, and American investors increasingly prefer “socially responsible portfolios” in which supporting human rights is a generally accepted criterion. Outsourcing companies therefore need to be prepared to answer questions from consumers and investors, and Vérité stands ready to help with the answers.

The Vérité network now offers in 10 countries objective expertise in evaluating working conditions of subcontracting producers. As a benefit sector organization, its impartiality, fairness, and reliability are clearer and less suspect than they might be from either government or for-profit evaluators whose neutrality might be, or seem to be clouded by political or profit motives. Vérité’s work has received careful evaluation and endorsement in grants from the John A. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Rockefeller, and the Ford Foundations. Vérité was selected as the independent monitor in the settlement of a class-action lawsuit, filed against 18 American retailers on behalf of 50,000 workers from China, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Thailand. Vérité will oversee compliance with U.S. laws and international labor rights standards in the U.S. Territory of Saipan, under a permanent corrections program which Vérité has been commissioned to establish. There are many other examples of Vérité’s outstanding accomplishments.

Vérité has trained over 70 professionals and senior staff of NGOs in China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Thailand; Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Mauritius; and Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. Its major strategic need now is to continue to develop this global network responsibly to keep pace with increasing opportunities and demand for its services.

(2000: INTERNATIONAL)