PROJECTS
Where the argument becomes work.
SINCE 2013 · DR CONGO & BISHOP AUCKLAND
PeaceGold™
Gold as a means of building peace and upholding human rights.
I co-founded PeaceGold in 2013 with Centre Résolution Conflits (CRC), the Congolese peacebuilding organisation. It now sources from eleven mining cooperatives in Ituri Province, exporting under ICGLR certification and OECD due diligence — and it puts former militia, child soldiers among them, into legitimate mining work with rehabilitation support from CRC in Beni.
In June 2026 we signed a long-term supply and financing agreement with SigraFi, the London gold offtake company. Multi-year contracts, prefinancing, compliance support. Payments are expected to reach close to twenty-five thousand miners and workers along the chain, and the cooperatives can finally invest in better equipment and mercury- and cyanide-free refining.
This is not Fairtrade, and it is not charity. Fairtrade sets a premium; PeaceGold is building a commercial route to market that pays for itself, which is the only way it lasts.
The gold ends its journey at the Ethical Jewellery House in Bishop Auckland, where the pieces are made and the craft is taught.
“The gold miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are being ripped off on a scale I have not seen in my thirty years.”
FINE JEWELLERY
Valerio Jewellery
Grandeur for the rich needn't mean grit for the poor.
My own ethical bridal, fine and bespoke brand — Fairtrade gold, fully traceable CanadaMark diamonds, Greenland ruby bought direct from the Inuit miners who dug it. Every piece is made in Britain.
1996 - 2010
Where the argument started, and where it was first proved.
CRED began in 1991 as Christian Relief Education and Development. CRED Jewellery followed in 1996 and became Britain's first high-street ethical jeweller — and the first company in Europe to retail fairly traded Oro Verde gold and green platinum.
It produced the world's first fairly traded engagement and wedding rings and launched the UK's first ethical jewellery website in 2004. In 2010 I sold the company to campaign full time — the same year I joined Fairtrade International's gold programme. CRED went on to become the first jeweller to work in Fairtrade gold when it launched in 2011.
CRED Jewellery
2003 ONWARDS· CHOCO, COLOMBIA
Fifty grams of green gold. Four wedding rings. The first traceable chain.
Oro Verde works with Afro-Colombian communities in the Chocó to win gold and platinum without mercury or cyanide, restoring the ground afterwards and keeping the value in the region.
I was the first international jeweller to go there. I came home with fifty grams of their gold, made four 18-carat wedding rings from it, and in doing so built one of the first fully traceable mine-to-retail gold supply chains that had ever existed. Everything since — ARM, Fairtrade Gold, PeaceGold — grew out of that trip.
Oro Verde
2008 ONWARDS · GREENLAND
Greenland Ruby
The resources of the land should benefit the people of the land.
In 2008 Inuit small-scale miners invited me to Greenland. What I found there I called the apartheid ruby: a people formally shut out of prospecting, owning, cutting, polishing and selling the stones under their own feet.
Through Fair Jewellery Action I campaigned for those rights, sat on the advisory board for the 2013 report on building an inclusive Greenlandic gemstone industry, and wrote its foreword. In 2020 I began importing cut and polished Greenland ruby direct from the miners.
SINCE NOVEMBER 2024 · 53 FORE BONDGATE
The Ethical Jewellery House
A bench in Bishop Auckland, at the end of a supply chain that starts in Ituri.
The workshop in County Durham is where the craft gets taught. A shop, a café and a goldsmith's bench under one roof: it runs jewellery-making courses, takes bespoke commissions, and handles repairs and remodelling. Classes are booked through peace-gold.com.
“Peace is not an optional extra in our world. It is a prize worth fighting for.”
It is the last link in the chain and the most visible one: the place where someone in the North East of England can learn to set a stone in metal that paid a Congolese cooperative a fair price for it.
ALSO
Standards, structures, and a book.
2010 -2015
Fairtrade Gold
Co-ordinating the international gold programme for Fairtrade — advising on the standard and connecting refiners, manufacturers, assay offices and governments across the supply chain. In Uganda, a mercury-free programme certified Africa's first Fairtrade Gold source.
2005 - 2010
Alliance for Responsible Mining
Founding board member of the NGO mineral consultancy specialising in artisanal mining communities, established alongside Colombian miners.
THE BOOK · 2013