The WA Fair Trade Collective had a meeting on Wednesday night, their first in a while. They discussed some really interesting stuff, and they are planning some good events in the next couple of months we could get involved in.
They are doing quite a bit of campaigning with councils to get them to become "Fair Trade" councils, and East Fremantle council has just made the switch. They will be using Fairtrade tea and coffee, and they also have to do some advocacy work to qualify for the name. On the 6th of december, they will be having a fair where they are going to have stalls explaining how Fairtrade works. I'm going to investigate to see if we can have a stall there too.
The Collective are also organising a Fairtrade Christmas market, at Aranmore, so there could be another stall opportunity there too. I'll keep you posted on that one.
We also had a woman named Rita, from Howorth in England, about how her town became the world's first fairtrade village. She owns a store named Sonya's Smiles, and she has been involved in some really cool campaigns for Fairtrade goods. A few years ago they made 14 scrapbooks, with a postcard in the front and a message about fairtrade. They sent these out into the community, hoping to get signatures and messages from people around the world. She gave one of the books to her local MP, and it came back signed by 52 members of the British parliament, with messages of support from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown! One also found its way to Australia, and was signed by Bob and Norman of Fair Go Trading. That's how she came to be at the meeting the other night. It is a great way to spread the message about Fairtrade, and its great to know how well the concept is travelling in the UK!
I'll keep you up to date regarding the stalls. Hope you're all having a good weekend.
Cheers
Tim McMinn
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