Fairtrade’s 20th Birthday Clarified

On Saturday 31^st May, we held our Fairtrade Summer Fair at Calverley, which was a very successful event with lots of different people coming along. £358.54 worth of fair trade goods were sold and £83.50 raised for Traidcraft Exchange through donations for refreshments and competition entries. Sarah Jemison won the Tea Quiz and Jean Denton successfully found Shanti’s schoolbag. Both win a copy of Bake a Difference, a new fairtrade cookbook produced by Traidcraft.

In last month’s Link, I said that it is Fairtrade’s 20^th birthday. The more informed of you will be aware that Traidcraft was started in 1979 so is clearly much older than 20! In fact, this year is the 20^th birthday of the Fairtrade Mark, which was launched in 1994, so although the fairtrade movement has existed for much longer, it is 20 years since official certification of fairtrade products began. When it was launched, the Fairtrade Mark appeared on just three products – one chocolate, one coffee and one tea. Now 450 different companies are licensed to trade 4,500 products, ranging from traditional commodities such tea and coffee to cotton, raisins, spices, cut flowers, cakes and gold jewellery.

The next big fairtrade event being planned in the Circuit is the Festive Fairtrade Fair, which is an opportunity to do some ethical Christmas shopping and enjoy refreshments amongst friends. This will be held on Saturday 22^nd November, venue to be confirmed.

Ruth

Calverley

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