Oro Verde, 2009 SEED Gold Winner, which was created by and for small-scale miners in the Chocó region (Colombia) has now reached international recognition and its impacts are growing.

It was green gold from the Oro Verde mines that Livia Firth wore on the red carpet, when her husband, Colin, accepted his Academy Award for Best Actor at the Oscars 2011 ceremony. This first-ever Fairtrade Fairmined Ecological gold jewelry was created with Oro Verde gold and designed and hand-made by goldsmith Anna Loucah in collaboration with CRED Jewellery. Read the full article here.

Greg Valerio, Fair Trade and human rights campaigner, and founder of both CRED Jewellery and the CRED Foundation, also recognised Oro Verde's invaluable role at the launch of Fairtrade Gold and testified that 'Oro Verde put the soul back into Gold'. View the full video below or click here.

Oro Verde, which created the first Certified Green Gold programme in the world, was the inspiration for the Fairtrade and Fairmined certification and proved on the ground that ecological gold mining was possible. They are founder members of the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM), and together with CRED have been working with the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO) towards the creation of the world's first “Fair Trade Gold” standard.

You can read more about Greg Valerio and Oro Verde here.