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The Free Consumers Association (Vrije Consumenten Vereniging) is a platform to exchange knowledge and experiences between consumers of the 21st century. A forum for active consumers and innovative initiatives.

Consumers who feel responsibility for their purchases, for the environment and for their relations with producers. Especially a platform for latest developments and new initiatives for sustainable products and services, fair trade and mutual respect in a globalising world, for 'consumer governance' in general! In the world economy there are producers and consumers, and traders and banks to connect those two. As a consumer we have twelve necessaries of life so we have to do with twelve groups of producers / traders / consumer associations (see below).

And in our choices we decide about seven aspects: quality (the most important), quantity, price, guarantees, form of payment, form of delivery and way of consuming. Every day we make decisions to which ‘producer’ our euro yen or dollar starts its new ‘round’. And when we ask the right questions, producers can give the right answers. So we ourselves as consumers have to work from an economy of supply and demand to an economy of question and answer!

 
Annual report 2009

Good governance initiatives entering like comets into the 21st century

Consumers and their organizations were asking ever better and more critical questions, even including the financial aspects of their choices. Trade organizations and banks as translators of the economy became more and more aware of their responsibility in the whole process. Producers and service organizations, including governments and ngo's are in the middle of transforming towards holistic ways of research, product development and guarantees, involving nature and all stakeholders. Towards corporate governance, government governance and consumer governance, or in other words: all parties are playing their role in the world economy more and more based on good governance!

The new standards for sustainable production and trade ISO / DIS 26000 were published this year and will be introduced in 2010. The fair trade organizations transformed their common goal into the new World Fair Trade Organization WFTO this year. Ethical banks decided to work together in the new group called Global Alliance for Banking on Values. Consumers International started introducing consumer education on schools worldwide.

Free Consumers Association

Also our organization was fully involved in all these worldwide developments, although on a small catalyzing scale of course. We were asked to give our comments and suggestions for the new ISO 26000 standards. We joined the discussions with World Fair Trade Organization and Consumers International about harmonizing sustainable hallmarks worldwide. And we presented our workshop about consumer governance at the conference of Consumer Citizen Network CCN for consumer education together with Consumers International and United Nations Decade of Education in Sustainable Development DESD 2005-2014. The CCN in which we are partners as well will continue as an advisory organization, now called Partnership in Education and Research about Responsible Living or PERL.

The Free Consumers Association still works more like a foundation and as a small catalist organization. The whole information flow is managed by only one person, especially to indicate that every consumer can manage his/her own information 360 degrees! THAT was the initial question asked in 1980 at the start: how can i myself as an individual consumer become an overview and enough insight in the complex world economy around me to work for what later would become a world wide slogan of the World Social Forum: "A better world is possible!" The one who triggered this research project was the Nobel prize winner for economics professor Paul Samuelson, writer of the most famous handbook for economy. He died this year at the age of 94 and will surely be very interested how the world goes on!

Our office is now in the beautiful south of the Netherlands, in Maastricht. The city where in 1992 at the Maastricht treaty the decision was taken to introduce a new coin: the Euro. Our activities in the years to come will be more and more international. Not only by writing and catalyzing and lobbying, but also assisting in e-learning programmes. Parallel to that we will go on in developing our research and expertise together with others in the newly started Consumer360 Academy.

Peter Daub
chairman

  Looking360... Jungfraujoch (Sphinx Observatory 3571 m)

Annual report 2008

The world around us

Most important development in the world was the OECD conference November 2007 in Brussels "Beyond GDP". Followed by a conference at the University of Tilburg in The Netherlands January 10 about the neccesary trend in thinking from Wealth to Well-being. If this is the breakthrough in our thinking about disconnecting labour and income, now in a current since the last three years, then we may have hope for another world! Because thinking about the quality of life - of ourself AND of all the others - is in fact our everyday starting-point in decisionmaking! See our publication / contribution to the conference "About the quality of life". Also the actual financial crisis and the solutions discussed are pointing in the same direction. YES to a free capatilist market in the economy, but then also say YES to a social system of dviding the wealth in a reasonable way. The same as the dutch accountancy professor Limperg always said that creating wealth is one issue (economic), dividing it is another issue (justice). The next international conference will be in 2009 January 16 in Antwerpen, Belgium.

But even more urgent is of course the present foodcrisis worldwide! Although the development in the quality of food and organic foodproduction is booming (Michelin-star top restaurants and their top cooks are switching to biological/biodynamic), the quantity-problem is even getting worse! Hopefully the experience of world politics in problemsolving will be strong enough to overcome the foodcrisis as well as the financial crisis! Hopefully WE CAN! Also this problem is not a question of production but also in the first place of the dividing of wealth to be able to buy your food and water etc. Especially now becomes visible that ....... "a reasonable income is a right" ! And in fact it's a consumer problem how six billion consumers divide the production they made together. Interesting discussions ahead!

Read more: Consumer360 Outlook 2009...

Catalizing change

As Free Consumers Association we are now more and more active in workshops, seminars, and in innovative projects such as "professionalizing" consumer-trade-producer dialogue and of course the ongoing conferences on consumer education of the Consumer Citizen Network, this year in Tallinn Estonia, next year in Berlin - see our publication in concept for a paper "Consumers and Consumer Organizations in Action".

Although we're a very small player in the field, our way of networking however is special in a way that we only send messages to people or organizations who are on the knots, the roundabouts or the crossings of some most essential networks in the world. Especially those who are working in categoral consumer organizations, or in specialised research activities, interested papers and journalists, interesting people saying interesting things, etcetera. Working from a white agenda into the colourfull world of daily history in the making That's why we call it "indirect" lobbying. Helping other consumer organizations to lobby by giving good arguments, warm support and as a think tank in helping to develop new initiatives, so called pioneer projects. As the World Social Forum calls it "Another World under Construction".

But the most important reason is of course that we are working on consumer governance of the individual consumer! He or she has to be able to survey the whole picture as a manager! Therefore the information for consumer governance has to be compact, to the point and highlighting the items which are really important. At least give a systematic informationsystem to find the way in the big google wiki wood of websites. So that every single consumer can learn to become a consumer360 !

Publications

Activities

Information

Other Statistics

Organization

Finance

 

Annual Report 2007

The year 2007 was full of activities and new developments. A new website, again hundreds of small catalist-actions such as comments, articles, networking, lobbying, joining discussions at many seminars and congress workshops, and last but not least following the world news to serve our members looking 360 degrees around the horizon to all twelve working fields in the world!

Strategically we worked more and more on priorities as quality of life, new ways in science, innovative initiatives and helping in the search for solutions in different problem-situations. And we started seminars and masterclasses in different cities in Holland and abroad! In Sofia Bulgaria we gave our first workshop in the Consumer Citizen Network CCN where teachers are preparing programmes for consumereducation on schools and universities worldwide, in connection with the UN Decade for Sustainable Development. In our workshop we worked on the issue "Consumer, Arguments and Producers".

In the world around us a lot of positive developments are going fast forward! Al Gore showed us the way in handling the Climate. Cradle2Cradle (see Google) is the new way for 100% sustainability. And Professor Pralahad wrote his famous marketing bestseller The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid about producing for the two billion poorest consumers as the new emerging markets! Globalising is going on!

Our plans for 2008 are to complete the english pages on our website and to globalise also! Our new (extra) name is consumer360.org to be remembered more easily, but especially to show the essence of the consumer-management-information-system. The image of the twelve daily needs produced around the horizon of our world!

PS For the bees who cannot speak for themselves we want to cry out for them that the global problem of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) is a problem for us all! The bees are dying of too much efficiency in bee-keeping, in the US and also in Europe up to 70% have died instead of the normal rate of 20% in winter times. And so we are loosing our girlfriends AND the basis of our agriculture!

So: buy more biological honey! (See also the breathtaking bestseller Phanomen Honigbiene - not yet in english - written by professor Jurgen Tautz and with 180 color photos isbn 978-3-8274-1845-6 and go to www.beegroup.de and watch the trailer video of BeeMovie!) Or Google to CCD Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD BEES in english or your own language. Save the bees!

The new subtitle of our association is: "forum for active consumers and innovative initiatives"!

Annual Report 2006

The smallest website about the biggest issue: consumer governance!

After 5 years we're still a small organization but that has everything to do with the character of our association! Catalyzers ARE always small by definition, they only try to help forward the bigger issues! But in 2007 we will introduce our new website and start with more lectures and seminars. And of course also continue in writing comments, joining discussions and social forums, indirect lobbying via consumer organizations, and networking by matching information between organizations, press-agencies and individuals.

In 2006 we gave seminars in consumer governance at the Dutch Social Forum and at Nyenrode University. We joined conferences about consumer education in Hamar/Norway, Berlin/Germany and Utrecht/Netherlands. And we were listening and discussing at several meetings with lectures of ministers and members of parliament. Plus seminars about microfinance, about alternative moneysystems, (Lietaer), and the introduction of his book Globalisation that works by Joseph Stiglitz in Amsterdam.

Comparing with other general and special consumer organizations we are focussed on management information as a tool itself. How can we as individuals oversee and understand the whole worldeconomy and ourselves in the middle of it? With the 360 degrees overview of consumerorganizations we all have to deal with, it has become much easier to find our way and to prepare our decisions. With the different pages of our website with "open courseware" information, search-options and a newpage in which we try to analyse the main issues, daily information becomes easy to read! In working out these things during lectures and seminars we experienced how everybody became aware of that as an eye-opener.

To write about all 200 actions this year would take pages. To get a broader insight of our activities see our former annual reports. An overview of the developments in consumer governance worldwide over the last few years is also given in our newspages.

Annual Report 2005

The Free Consumers Association was in 2005 particularly active in exchanging information on innovative producer-consumer dialogue. In a way we call "indirect" lobbying we fulfilled in more than a hundred cases the role of catalyst, transmitting information or think along in the search for appropriate knowledge or good arguments.

Last year there came an increasingly global consumer momentum as we said already in our last annual report 2004. It was mainly very visible this year in September at the expansion and participation of civil society organizations within the United Nations in December, and at the participation and recommendations of Consumers International at the WTO in Hong Kong ("Say NO to GMO"). But it became clear that people worldwide increasingly wish to be involved in new developments in (direct) democratization, debtrelief developing countries, conscious investing, untill ethics of science and its applications. Consumers / citizens movements also grew more and more towards an increasingly broad support for businesses and politicians to continue work on "good governance". Towards an economy of question and answer!

In 2005 we took part in seminars on the history of finance (Colors of Money), alternative money schemes (Lietaer), ethics and sustainable business (Club of Rome, the UN Earth Charter), new forms of marketing like MultiChannelManagement (Nyenrode seminar Wells Fargo Bank ), and about taking initiatives as a process (Triodos Bank). Furtheron a one-day training about lobbying plus a visiting tour through the European Parliament buildings in Brussels together with consumers from the new European countries. We also worked actively in the preparations for the next Dutch Social Forum 2006 that will take place 20-21 May in Nijmegen.

All these seminars and conferences helped us to go on to be informed about all the latest developments. But they also offered opportunities to direct discussions to think and to argue. From our experiences and know-how plus the great information that flows through our association was often possible to go further, to help structuring or to provide arguments for further innovation.


Annual Report 2004

Vrijeconsumenten.nl is on the map!

The Free Consumers Association is now in an accelerating world of consumers increasingly participating. This year, more and more questions we could answer in the form of interviews, delivering articles and participate in seminars and debates.

Interviews published in Nyenrode VCV Magazine (producers) and the DO Sustainable Business Courier of the Dutch Council of Women (consumers). For Driegonaal, a magazine about the threefolding aspects of culture, law and economics, we wrote the history of our association. At BEUC the European organization of Consumer organizations in Brussels we followed four days in training for consumer legislation, consumer rights. In Delft, a small lecture and a final debate on the "new consumer", together with Unilever, and Club of Rome. (The same place where we were in 1972 when the Dutch branch of the Club of Rome was founded during a big congress).

In Amsterdam we started with our own workshop at the first Dutch Social Forum in Amsterdam. In December we participated in a seminar in Stuttgart with the writers of "Another World is Possible" by the International Forum on Globalization IFG. Participation in two Internet discussions of World Watch Institute on consumption. Their yearbook State of the World in 2004 was fully dedicated to the consumer! Similarly the special December edition of the Courier-DO of the Dutch Council of Women.

Consumers International launched in South America on a large scale consumer education in schools. And in Switzerland, Demeter Konsumenten designed a special training course for consumers of organic / dynamic food. The European Commission drew even 72 million euros for management training for new consumer organizations! In England, an international standard was set for companies that integrate producer-consumer dialogue (associattive economics).

Although we ourselves have only a few club members are now clearly on the map! But in 2005 the course will really show which role we can play as an association, a platform, a catalyst for innovation. Besides the development of many networks which now take place may perhaps give more opportunities, plus seminars, active discussions and challenging articles helping others in the "maturity phase", the professional phase of the consumer in the 21st century! We call it consumer governance!

The main plans for the 2005 are renewal of the website, and especially active participation in innovation through writing, discussing and networking. At the annual meeting April 2, we have completed this review of developments in the first quarter of this year: English summary on the website, group participation preparation Dutch Social Forum in 2006, press release distribution, many other network-activities and e-mails. (Instead of a flip-over with a marker we made drawings on the parquet-floor, as lines in the sand. An idea that arose following the example of the artist Joseph Beuys when he spoke about "Social Art").

History (1980-2004)

Article in the magazine Driegonaal, September 2004

Free Consumers Association on the Web
vrijeconsumenten.nl as a guide in associative economy

by Peter Daub

The Free Consumers Association is since February this year on the internet. The website vrijeconsumenten.nl is also an innovative search-engine for all currents in consumer activity, a brief introduction in consumer education, household expenses and a new style (manager). In short a complete set of management tools for consumers. This article gives an overview of its content and development in conjunction with threefold society (culture/justice/economiy) and globalization.

Associations in the making

Driegonaal published in January 1979 a special number about consumer-producer associations. Together with many others we wrote about how the economy should be addressed differently in this world. Now 25 years later we see that in all areas of consumer associations arise consultations with manufacturers and service providers. To subscription forms and annual meetings. The last direction to get under way was the one most connected to the earth: food (agriculture) Via vegetable packs, open days and "Pergola-associations" came into motion only the last ten years.

Recently there are even many new initiatives worldwide! In Switzerland, a conference launched a consumer education course. In England, the Institute of ae-label for associative working companies. The EU provides training for developing consumer-organizations. And the Worldwatch Institute dedicated the 2004 State of the World and its website this year entirely to the consumer. And with the major conferences of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre on ethical globalization, and this year India the world was one village at last! And even a festival of globalization on June 28 and 27 in Amsterdam ("I am a World Leader") was a great success! On 26, 27 and November 28 as the first Dutch Social Forum takes place in Amsterdam.

For further orientation in the global economy and in the laws to recognize there is now also our new website. An extremely convenient ordering of managementinformation based on the 12 necessities of life and the 7 trade issues. Through news, seminars, forums and of course the help desk can be an interesting focal point for members and website visitors. We are a statutory association for the exchange of insights and experiences. A platform for discussion between consumers. Research and advocacy, we therefore deliberately left to research institutions and interest groups.

Some History

The initiative originated in 1980 when I took the decision to move from advising innovative companies at Triodos Bank towards helping consumers find what they could further 'professionalise'. From my managerial background, I then searched for the economic laws for consumer transparency. Years of "phenomenological" research in various consumer groups, but particularly in my own position as consumers ultimately yielded a clear picture. After several publications, courses and lectures it appeared finally in 1998 all in one book "Consumer freedom and responsibility". The website is actually a brief summary of it plus a search engine.

Consumer and threefolding

But what about the thoughts of threefold social order and how can we recognize those laws? Without writing on now in this article the main aspects of liberty equality and fraternity are coming into sharper focus more and more in the global debate. Including the four major subjects associations, forms of money, property and income distribution. But we also see so many trends, things again to reverse or to confuse! But to all those "fronts" so much discussed in the world does indicate that the time is now!

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