Interview with Nico Roozen, Founder of Max Havelaar Keurmerk, Fair Trade International and leaving Managing Partner of Solidaridad
Solidaridad celebrated its founding 50 years just last month. Nico Roozen, the director for decades, also passed on the leadership stick to Jeroen Douglas. On the occasion of his farewell, Balt Leenman had a conversation with divorcing director Nico Roozen.
Be sure to view the interview below with Nico Roozen, in which he looks back on 50 years of Solidaridad, and shares his vision on how cloud platforms such as Google and Salesforce can lead to “Fair Data”.
Solidaridad was the first Dutch international NGO to effectively embrace new technology and implement it globally: Salesforce and Google’s G Suite, solutions in which g-company could advise them.
Solidaridad owes the introduction of these solutions to Nicolaas van Boeckel, the IT manager. We met Nicolaas in 2013, when he worked at MamaCash. We then set up Salesforce for their program management and fundraising. After the successful implementation, Nicholas left for Solidaridad where he introduced both Salesforce and G Suite as a solution. This fitted in well with the vision and ambition of Executive Director Nico Roozen. Solidaridad has succeeded in implementing a global system for all regions, with which the impact of the activities can be reported transparently. Nico Roozen calls that “NGO 3.0”, see Balt Leenman’s blog post about his personal meeting with Nico Roozen – in Dutch.
Fair data according to Nico Roozen
“Data that helps people to gain more knowledge and insight with the help of new technology. In the case of Solidaridad, this data must remain the property of the local farmers in order to improve their own position. In line with ‘fair trade’, Nico mentions Roozen this ‘fair data’:
Data that makes the world a little nicer and more honest! “
Nico Roozen, Founder of Max Havelaar coffee, Fairtrade International and designer of Solidaridad Network, Managing Partner since 1987(!), left in May 2019.
Are you inspired to work more data-driven? Get in touch via balt@gcompany.nl! We are happy to think with you.
