15 July 2008
Dear Becca,
Many thanks for submitting your renewal of Fairtrade Town status
for Woking in November 2007. It is our very great pleasure to confirm that Woking
has successfully renewed Fairtrade Town status. Congratulations!
The phenomenal growth and activity of Fairtrade Towns like
yours has played a huge part in increasing understanding of Fairtrade and sales
of products with the FAIRTRADE Mark. Thanks to the work of groups like Woking
Fairtrade Action Network,
sales of Fairtrade products in the UK alone reached almost half a billion
pounds in 2007 and over 7 million people
– producers, workers and their families – are now able to benefit from
Fairtrade.
We would like to apologise for the delay in processing your renewal
application and thank you for your patience. The growth of the Fairtrade Town
initiative and the incredible work done by local groups has also meant an
increase in the number of applications we receive. We have now increased the
capacity of the Campaigns Team and made changes to internal processing systems
which should help us to respond better to your needs. We have also initiated Regional
Support Networks which we hope will help to provide more support at the local
level in future.
From reading your renewal
application it is clear that your Fairtrade campaign has continued to go
forward in Woking and that a great deal of hard work has gone in to promoting
Fairtrade and increasing understanding of why Fairtrade is so important. We
were particularly impressed by your extensive work with schools in Woking,
especially organising the ‘Change Today Choose
Fairtrade’. In addition, your engagement with workplaces, including the
competition you ran with cafes is an imaginative and vital element of your
campaign and has clearly contributed to the large number of retail and catering
outlets using Fairtrade products. Congratulations too on engaging with the
local Muslims community – it is excellent to see not only events taking place
in the mosque, but also involvement by mosque members in the steering group. We
appreciate the time and energy involved in running a campaign such as this and
would like to thank everyone who has played a part in taking Fairtrade in Woking
Borough from strength to strength. It is excellent to see such a wide range of
community representatives on your steering group.
Given the amount of time
that has passed since your application was originally submitted, we do not want
to offer comments or suggestions that may no longer be relevant or helpful and we
are confident that your local campaign will have developed significantly since
we received the last update. If you would like any suggestions or ideas on ways
to develop specific areas of your campaign, do feel free to contact either
myself, Hannah Reed (hannah.reed@fairtrade.org.uk),
or
Your last renewal
application covered activities from October 2005 to November 2007. The next
renewal application will therefore be due in November 2009. As mentioned, we
are currently improving the renewal application process so please continue to
keep a record of your achievements and we will be in touch closer to the time
with details on how to submit your next renewal application. In your next
renewal please include past and present numbers of business/community organisations using Fairtrade so that we can see progress
that has been made in Woking.
Many thanks once again for
all you are doing to promote Fairtrade and support farmers in developing
countries and we look forward to hearing more about your latest achievements in
due course.
Best regards,
Hannah Reed
Campaign
Coordinator
Fairtrade Towns