SGFTN Newsletter No.1, Dec 2002

Welcome to the first 'official' communication of the newly formed "South Gloucestershire Fair Trade Network" (SGFTN for short!).

To those of you who were able to attend the inaugral meeting on November 12th: thank you for coming and showing your support, I hope that you enjoyed the meeting and felt encouraged to continue promoting and supporting Fair Trade.  To those of you who were unable to attend the meeting: sorry you couldn't make it, but thank you for expessing support and interest in the formation and activities of SGFTN. I hope we'll be able to meet at future meetings / Fair Trade activities.

Talking of activities, at present I see SGFTN as having 2 main items on its agenda:

1. Fairtrade Fortnight  Mar 3-14 2003
2. Compiling a Fairtrade directory for South Glos

(If there are other issues that I should have included here please let me know)

Fairtrade Fortnight: The Fairtrade Foundation has a lot of material available, from worship ideas to action packs to supermarket publicity packs. It would be great to get publicity in as many supermarkets as possible during the fortnight, to raise public awareness of fairtrade, and we will discuss the best way of doing this at the next meeting of SGFTN, as well as any other types of publicity stunt that would be possible.

In the meantime, please consider how you can help:

• e.g. - ask at your local supermarket(s) if we can have a stand at any time during the fortnight
• round up friends that would be willing to help so we have an idea of potential manpower available
• could you run a promotion at work, school , church etc?

If you want to order materials, I have some order forms from Fairtrade Foundation that I can send to people on request, or I am happy to do a bulk order to save on postage, or go ahead and contact the Fairtrade Foundation yourselves, whichever is easiest for you. www.fairtrade.org.uk

As for the Fairtrade directory, I need to find out if we can get funding for this, and then we will consider the best way to go forward from there - so watch this space!

Finally, as co-ordinator of SGFTN, I am very much feeling my way so PLEASE, tell me what you think of what we are doing, what we should be doing and how best I can be of use to you all as you do your wonderful works promoting Fairtrade.

The next meeting of SGFTN is scheduled for:
  Tuesday , 21/01/03
  @7.30pm
  @Zion United Church, Frampton Cotterell
  (If you need directions, please let me know)
when we will firm up plans for Fairtrade Fortnight.

In the meantime, I wish you all a peaceful and blessed Christmas, and may 2003 get off to a wonderful start for you all!

Best wishes
Helen Harrison
 

PS, Did you hear that all of the Co-op's own brand chocolate now has the Fairtrade Mark and is made with cocoa from the Kuapa Kokoo co-operative in Ghana. Also, Sainsburys have produced their own-brand filter coffee (including a decaff variety) and drinking chocolate with the Fairtrade mark. Good news, especially if you live close enough to one of these supermarkets to support them.