Introducing PeaceGold ™
Peace is the necessary precondition for the human family to thrive. I have always believed in active peace, a societal state of wholeness, fullness and the opportunity to thrive as the human family. The tragedy of war and conflict is it shatters our harmony, destabilises the fabric of our shared humanity, dismantles our ability to see the best in each other and must foster hatred for 'the other' in order to thrive.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a country that has found its way into my heart over the last 10 years of my life. As an ethical jeweller and activist, I have been working with peace building organisations and civil society human rights groups, as well as responsible gold cooperatives and community development organisations. This is a country with the tragic record of the longest running conflict in the world. A country struggling with the legacy of European (Belgian) colonialism, western and Chinese neo-colonialism and ethnic destabilisation from its immediate neighbours. For what purpose? Everyone wants the easy and seemingly endless mineral wealth in the rich red soils of Congo.
I am not a political historian, anthropologist or social scientist, so to delve into the mystery of Congo's history, exploitation, collective trauma, is a little above my pay-grade, so I defer to the excellent work of FIDEL BAFILEMBA & JOHN PRENDERGAST who have co-authored the harrowing and hope filled book and website entitled Congo Stories: Battling Five centuries of exploitation and greed.
Yet during the past 10 years, I have witnessed in this most resilient of countries, that despite the harrowing of the soul and history of the Congolese peoples, there remains the true light of hope, that if peace were allowed to flourish will lead to a land filled with justice, peace and prosperity for everyone. This is the hope we work towards, and to understand the driver of why a group of us have created PeaceGold, you must understand the red earth of hope into which we are now planting the PeaceGold Tree.
The PeaceGold Programme - building a grass roots movement.
The PeaceGold programme its tangible. It involves gold mining coops, civil society peace building organisation, local communities where gold is mined, local town leadership, territorial and provincial authorities. This is slow work, but an 'oak tree of righteousness' has deep roots, grows slowly and is strong.
The branches of our programme are:
Peace Building Education - Working with CRC to build out peace making and conflict resolution strategies for members. This also involves the demobilisation and reintegration of ex-militia who have under taken to lay down their lives in militia or rebel groups.
Mercury Free gold mining using appropriate and contextual technology.
National Registration, compliance and alignment with the Congolese mineral code, ICGLR and OECD diligences on sourcing gold from conflict effected areas.
Best practice in artisanal small-scale mining using the Craft Code ( click here to watch a short clip explaining Craft)
The 1% social fund. Each Coop agrees to set aside 1% of the traded value in gold, which they invest into their own community development. This is not a social premium payment as with Fairtrade or Fairmined, this is a community based response by the COOP to uplift their community and commitment to social cohesion, peace building and human rights.
Eradiction of Child Labour and Gender empowerment
The last ten years have been about creating a model of peace building with gold mining coops, that works. In a complex and fluid security situation such as eDRC, plus complicated bureaucracies, corruption, alongside international expectations and protocols around responsible sourcing of gold, many models of community development in and around gold often fall flat. This has been complex and at times mystifying work.
Our PeaceGold social enterprise has emerged from within the Cooperatives and communities themselves.
Gold miners are asking for legitimate stability in trade, mercury free processing, and have embraced the social fund idea enthusiastically. It is not an exaggeration to say we are being approached monthly by mining groups who want to get onto the programme. People are tired of war, they want peace and prosperity. So what we have seen emerge is an embryonic social enterprise model based up a mutually shared circular economy.
The PeaceGold Partnership - decolonising gold through shared ownership and a circular economy.
One of our distinctives is the creation of a circular economy in gold. For too long small-scale miners have been the primary victims of the resource curse and and at the bottom of the wealth distribution model. Small miners simply get exploited at every turn. So we have started our migration from a non-profit model of community engagement, to a for-profit social enterprise and the development of a circular economy. Over the last 18-months we have begun to crystallise the PeaceGold community learning into a contextual business model.
We want everyone to have a stake in the building of peace through gold.
Critics of the ever burgeoning African charity sector will tell you, non-profit money is not sustainable. So we have created a traditional, yet transformatory supply chain. Our roots being in the local context and branches extending out to the worldwide ethical jewellery movement.
PeaceGold is an exercise in building on the work of Peace Direct and CRC and transitioning to a business model that economically sustainable, has a circular economy and involves shared ownership. Some will naturally be skeptical and given the scale of the historic exploitation in Congo that is understandable. Yet our progress in building our model out will be a series of growth curves that are values led. Our values are Peace, Justice and Partnership and our task is to grow and evolve with these values firmly in front of us. We firmly believe the resources of the land belong to the people of the land.
Civil Society Peace Building Organisation - Centre for Resolution Conflict (CRC).
PeaceGold grew out of a specific felt need identified by the Centre for Resolution Conflicts The need to continue the demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants, many of whom struggled for worthwhile work. Like many people in Ituri they had experience in artisanal gold digging. So the notional idea of using gold as way of building peace and providing legitimate work was born. CRC has an essential role in PeaceGold. They work alongside the COOP's and wider communities bringing the vital support, encouragement and pyscho-social counselling and intervention needed for individuals and communities to deal with the daily traumas that exist. They also provide vital expertise in assisting the COOP's achieve the organisational, legal and community development objectives. The peace and reconciliation work of civil society groups like CRC are the earth into which we plant the PeaceGold tree.
PeaceGold Cooperatives.
The COOP's are the bone marrow of PeaceGold. Without them there is no gold. Without them there is no connection to the wider community, and without them the community based education around peace and mining cannot take place. PeaceGold Coop's agree to work on a continual improvement basis. There are of course some baselines that the COOP's have chosen to give them a distinctive (see Craft Code).
PeaceGold Congo - PiaxOr™
We will be establishing a Congolese based company that will hold 2 licenses. This business will be jointly owned by the local miners and the PeaceGold Community Interest Company (CIC). It will have two principle functions;
a) to aggregate the gold coming from PeaceGold Coop's and to then liaise and administrate logistics, security, legal export process and delivery to our customers.
b) To work alongside the COOP's and the civil society peace building organisation to make sure that all the national and international regulations (OECD Due Diligences, ICGLR Regional Certification Mechanism and national legal compliance) are all in order.
This work is not easy, Congo is a difficult and complex region of the world to export gold from, yet our Comptoir will be the vital transitional cog in the wheel of PeaceGold.
PeaceGold Community Interest Company (CIC) - Making PeaceGold available to all.
The PeaceGold CIC will be based in the UK. And a CIC we will lock in the community interest into our constitution, and be audited against our stated community interest aims. Our aims are straight forward. Invest and support into civil society peace building organisations, communities and mining coops that live and work in conflict affected regions of the world.
For too long gold miners and their communities have been robbed of the value of the gold that sits under their feet. Those riches have neither blessed them nor the country they dwell in. This is not the time to rehearse the evils of colonialism and its off spring neo-colonial corporate mining. We want the grass roots to have a real stake in the value of the gold once it has been sold in country. Our Community Interest Company will aim to address this directly through a shared ownership model for both the Comptoir and the CIC.
a) Sales & Marketing of bullion products for jewellers.
For PeaceGold to work its magic, we need refiners and ethical jewellers to buy PeaceGold. If we don't make sales, we don't have a circular economy. So working tightly with the Comptoir and our refining partners, we will present the gold to the jewellery market as;
Unrefined or Doray bars of gold for Refiners to purchase
Casting grain - 24k (999.9), 18k casting grain in yellow, white and rose gold for jewellers
Pure Gold Minted products - 10g, 50g, 100g designed gold coins and bars
We will also be able to supply gold to larger jewellery brands, who have specific volume delivery requirements.
b) PeaceGold™ is a registered TradeMark created under the auspices of Peace Direct. Our aspiration is for a brand that is loved and respected for its honesty, integrity, commitment to peace, social & environmental justice.
.c) Valerio Jewellery™ - as a part of my personal commitment to building peace & justice I have taken the decision to fold my own jewellery brand Valerio Jewellery into being a part of the PeaceGold CIC. We will continue to sell classical diamond, gemstone and gold wedding jewellery. I will migrate the Valerio offering from sourcing Fairtrade Gold to PeaceGold™
To conclude - an invitation.
We are at the beginning of our journey with PeaceGold, a genuine adventure in the dynamic relationship between artisanal miners and jewellers. A relationship I have come to recognise as full of potential and extraordinary creativity. If you are a refiner who is interested in becoming a customer of PeaceGold