The
speakers were (left to right in photo):
• Talk: Fairtrade in Palestine - Friday 29th February – Shah Jahan Mosque, 8pm. Taysir Arabesi, a Palestinian working with the ethical company Zaytoun, spoke about how fair trade is making a difference to Palestinian farmers through the sale in the UK of olive oil, dates and other products.
• Fairtrade Fashion Show - Saturday 1st March – Cotton on the Catwalk, Food Court, The Peacocks Shopping Centre. Designs in Fairtrade cotton by students from Brooklands College were modeled throughout the day.
• Business Breakfast - Woking Fairtrade Action Network is delighted to be working with Cafedirect and the Lightbox to hold a Business Breakfast. Local business leaders were able to hear all about the work and motivation behind Fairtrade innovator Cafedirect, and heard directly from an African tea farmer about the difference Fairtrade makes in the lives of his community.
• Schools photographic competition - We ran a schools competition as in previous years. This year it took the form of a photographic competition and the winning entries wereon display in the Lightbox in March.
See Fairtrade Fortnight 2008 poster
Esquires, one of our local coffee shops which really supports the use of Fairtrade products, has won an industry award as the best in the South East.
The Woking Fairtrade Action Network AGM was held at the Maybury Centre. Anna Seifert spoke about fairly traded Palestinian olive oil and her recent trip to see the olive harvest and meet the farmers..
WFAN has been given the go-ahead to hold a Fairtrade Fashion Show on the ground floor of the Peacocks during Fairtrade Fortnight. We are looking for some young enthusiastic campaigners to help put the show together. Contact Jenniann for more details.
Woking Mosque – We have made some great contacts at the mosque by holding a stall each Friday prayers through Ramadan. We mainly sold fairly traded olive oil and dates, but also other Fairtrade products. To our surprise the honey was really popular too. Several members of the mosque have indicated that they would like to set up their own stall on a regular basis, which would be brilliant. Did you know, Muslims break their fast each day with a date which is why selling fairly traded Palestinian dates went down so well!
Guildford was busy in October and November with 3 fairs that all had a Fairtrade element. The Guildford Fairtrade group held a Fairtrade fair, the Compassionate Living fair had a Fairtrade stall as well as a stall for the Zaytoun Palestinian Fairtrade products and the Cathedral held a Christmas fair with Fairtrade and Palestinian stalls as well.
Becca helped out at the cathedral fair and heard that £500 of fairly traded Palestinian olive oil was sold. Good job!
The Fair is actually in the Cathedral itself - primarily to raise funds for the Cathedral (mainly building restoration work), but it would be really good to have some Fair Trade stalls too… (as we should be a Fairtrade Church by then). If you would like to have a stall please email Elizabeth to see if there are still spaces: E.Thompson AT surrey.ac.uk
WFAN committee member Sue Biddle writes: "You might like to know that the Co-op in Pyrford are selling superb, really good quality cotton shopping bags for 99p each. They are a good size with the fairtrade logo etc. on them. I've bought them for my friends."
Now that cotton has Fairtrade certification we have found out that not only M&S but also Monsoon, Next and Debenhams have all launched Fairtrade cotton clothing ranges, mostly T-shirts, vest tops, underwear and PJ’s. However, enquiries into local stores indicates that none of the Woking branches are currently stocking these products and tell us that they are too small. Please keep asking for Fairtrade!
The links page has links to clothing companies who sell cotton with the fair-trade mark – many of whom were exhibitors at last year’s fabulous Fairtrade Fashion show.
[ Selected photos of 2005's Fairtrade Fair and Fashion Show
Ten products from Fair Trade and Organic company Tropical Wholefoods are currently on trial in in the new Wholefoods sections of six Morrisons stores including Woking. The products are:
If the trial is successful, then Tropical Wholefoods will get listings in all Morrisons stores. This will enable them to increase their purchases from their Fair Trade suppliers considerably.
Is Fairtrade for those with a heart and Free Trade for those with a head? A debate on the Economics.
Some 350 people turned out for this WFAN-organised debate, coming from as far as London, Godalming, Aldershot and Reigate. It just goes to show that there is an appetite out there for people to better understand the relationship between trade and poverty.
The
speakers were (left to right in photo):
You can get a copy of a recording of this debate on CD from Becca (see Contact Us page). You may at some stage also be able to listen to the recording on www.christchurchwoking.org.uk.
View (1) speaker profiles (2) a copy, in pdf format, of the relevant poster on the debate on the economics of fairtrade.
Local campaigners were delighted to hear that the Sainsbury’s Café at Brookwood will be changing their coffee to Fairtrade as part of a national decision. Congratulations Sainsbury’s on the switch!
We would like to offer one or two teachers from each school in the Woking area the opportunity to attend an after school training session on Tuesday 16th January, 2007, 4:00-5.30pm at Oaktree Infants School, Gorsewood Road, St. John’s. The aim is to explain how your school can become a Fairtrade school.
Please email Claire Jackson, WFAN Schools Co-ordinator (see contact us page), with the names of your school and one or two teachers by the end of the Autumn term.
We also heard not long ago that the coffee shop at Wisley RHS Gardens is now serving Fairtrade coffee as the norm. With a great gift shop on site, Becca didn’t need much persuasion to check out if this was true. If you visit do remember to tell the staff that you are pleased they now have Fairtrade coffee.
Sue Biddle has joined our steering group as a speaker on Fairtrade. She is happy to speak to adult groups and is taking bookings. [ Photo of the group who attended the Traidcraft speaker programme last summer. Sue is on the top row, second from right ]
Café Americano's coffee is now supplied by Union Coffee Roasters. Some of the coffee carries the Fairtrade Mark but all of it is fairly traded. The reason not all coffee carries the FT Mark is that for it to be sold through FT channels a farmer must be part of a cooperative. This means that small individual farms in remote locations may not be able to participate in the Fairtrade process. Union Coffee Roasters is an ethical firm that seems to make a point of working with farmers in this situation. If you want to know more, their Care For Coffee web site is www.michaelsobellhouse.co.uk/cfcmain/home.htm. All their sugar is also now Fairtrade.
Please click on www.fairtrade.org.uk/pr110306.htm.
Woking’s Fairtrade group have been awarded a sum from the ‘Awards for All’ programme of the Lottery Grants for Local Groups. The sum is to cover the cost of producing a leaflet about Fairtrade which will be sent out to all households in the Borough as an insert to the November issue of the Woking Magazine. Plenty of spare copies will be available from Becca for anyone who has an opportunity to distribute them further.
*** See FT photos 2006 for photos. **
Becca has been sent a 20-minute Powerpoint presentation, with accompanying script, on Making Poverty History. It celebrates what was achieved by the MPH campaign in 2005. If you would like to use it or have one of the WFAN team present it to a group or church congregation, contact us. You can also download it using the following links:
Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard to achieve this. Without the efforts of many, many people this would not have been possible.
There was a celebration in Guildford Cathedral of the fact that Guildford Diocese has achieved Fairtrade status through the hard work of many people in the parishes.
Woking’s Fairtrade fame has spread. A group from Norway visieted Woking on 7th February to see how we ran the campaign to become a Fairtrade town.
This took place at St. Saviour’s Church, Woodbridge Road, Guildford. There will be two very eminent Speakers. Susan Prowse, who works with Hillary Benn in the Department of International Development, will talk about World Trade. Barbara Lawes is the Mothers Union Worldwide Special Projects Officer will explain how the work of MU has become so effective in the Developing World by enabling women to use their own initiatives and talents to improve the lives of their families and local communities. There will be Exhibitions, Workshops and Music based on issues from Peru, West Indies and Sudan. Admission is FREE but, to give an indication of the numbers involved, please contact MU at Diocesan House (01483 504009) or any MU Branch. Coffee will be served on registration. Lunch will be provided by the charity PROJECT PERU who will make a moderate charge to cover their costs, so a polite request is made for participants NOT to bring their own food. (The Guildford Jubilee Debt Campaign group was formed this spring, part of a coalition of local/regional groups and national organisations whose focus is on changing UK government policy on debt.)
Despite the soggy day there was a good turn out from right across the country. Eight of us from Woking showed up. We were able to meet with our own MP, Humfrey Malins, for about half an hour. Mr Malins said of our contingent: “I was delighted to receive this delegation. I am writing to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on their behalf, asking what this government will do to respond to trade justice concerns.” [ statement that Humfrey Malins' gave us on the Conservative Party’s position on fair / free trade ]
Campaigners have been lobbying the government for change on trade rules so as to do away with trade conditions that force farmers in developing countries to compete with cheaper foreign imports. It is encouraging how far the debate about trade has moved on over the last few years. We have to keep pressure up for the world trade organisation meeting which takes place in December! You can check out the Trade Justice Movement website at www.tjm.org.uk.
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| Children from Oaktree School with their Fairtrade award and artwork. (Click picture to ENLARGE) |
Oaktree School in St Johns has just become the first school in Woking to achieve Fairtrade status. To become a Fairtrade School, Oaktree School for infants had to meet three goals that involved promoting Fairtrade.
Councillor Ken Howard is a governor and chair of the Eco committee at the Oaktree School commented, “It’s really not difficult to gain Fairtrade status for schools, and it’s so important. Even if people only put one Fairtrade item in their shopping basket, it will make a difference.” Head teacher, Mrs Glen Alder added “Fairtrade is already in the curriculum and it helps children think about the wider world.”
If you would like to know more about how Fairtrade gives farmers in third world countries a better deal, then visit www.fairtrade.org.uk
Anyone wishing to contact Becca following her interview on the Breakfast Show can do so by emailing or phoning her.
Campaigners from our group joined millions of others from around the world in a week of action for trade justice. The campaigners called on the government to put trade justice on the agenda of the G8 (meeting of the world’s richest nations), when it meets in July. The global week of action is a part of the year long campaign to Make Poverty History, which was launched in Trafalgar Square by Nelson Mandela in February.
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| Becca, Billie and families present Humphrey Mallins, Woking's MP, with 10 banners that had been signed by hundreds of Woking people, asking Tony Blair to help' make poverty history' in 2005. (Click pic to ENLARGE) |
The organisers - the Trade Justice Movement - want poor countries to have the right to help farmers and vulnerable industries. At present, such countries have to accept 'free trade' policies, resulting in millions of farmers being left to compete with cheap imports that flood their markets. Unable to sell their goods they lose their only means of making a living. The week ended with a national protest night in London , where our Woking group joined 25, 000 people to make it the biggest trade justice event so far. Gordon Brown paid tribute to campaigners, saying:
I would
like to pay tribute to all those who have, out of shared conviction, commitment
and courage, gathered in Westminster and will hold a vigil all night calling
for trade justice. The Trade Justice Movement forms a unique coalition that
shows that we are each of us not powerless individuals but that acting together
we have the power to change the world for the better. And because of the challenge
you posed to us, the government have said clearly that poor countries should
not be forced into trade liberalisation either as a result of aid conditionality
or mercantilist approach to trade negotiations.
But I know you will not rest because words have to be turned into action by
all of the international community and action into outcomes that help all of
the world’s poor. And so, I commend not just what you have achieved so
far but for what you aspire to achieve.
Make Poverty History day at St. Saviours Church, Woodbridge Road, Guildford, included speakers and workshops, youth parliament, music, art and drama, and the Make Poverty History Youth Concert. For more information on the Trade Justice Movement visit www.tjm.org.uk .
The 'flash mob' that took place in Woking Town Square on the 6th November was a huge success, with over 100 local supporters showing up. [Photo 1] [Photo 2]
last update: 27/05/2008 |
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