What is Fairtrade Fortnight 2014?

Did you know Fairtrade Fortnight is just around the corner? If you are less familiar with Fairtrade Fortnight, it is an annual celebration funded and organised by the Fairtrade Foundation to raise awareness of Fairtrade and promote Fairtrade products.  This year the event is taking place from the 24^th February to the 9^th March.  It is celebrated by consumers, retailers, businesses, schools, churches, producers and campaigners around the country who organise and participate in activities to campaign the importance of trade justice.  The types of events and activities that take place include food and drink tasting, fashion shows, fairs, fetes and much more! 

Every year Fairtrade Fortnight has a different theme running through it, last year was based around Fairtrade cotton.  The theme for this year is bananas.  Did you know the banana is the most popular fruit in the world with people spending more than £10 billion a year on the fruit globally?  Over the years bananas have been at the heart of Fairtrade and more than 1.3 billion Fairtrade bananas are sold in the UK each year.  Fairtrade supporters are hoping the Abolish Unfair Banana campaign will educate others the benefits of Fairtrade for small time farmers and workers.  There are still growing problems facing the banana industry, as many famers and workers are struggling to sustain a decent standard of living.  Small time farmers grow on average 70% of the world’s food however the reality is they only receive around 3% of the retail price once their products hit the supermarket shops.  The campaign around bananas seems fitting really to educate others about the benefits Fairtrade does for struggling small time farmers and workers.  

We at Rainbow Turtle can’t wait to get stuck in to Fairtrade Fortnight this year.  We hope you all will participate in some way whether it’s educating others about Fairtrade, buying Fairtrade or running events for your community.  Come on Go Bananas for Fairtrade! 

What to expect from Rainbow Turtle in 2014

The Rainbow Turtle team has been kept busy over the last year and there is no sign of slowing down for next year.  We've got so much to look forward to in the coming year and here is why…

Logo

Since October we had reviewed our current logo design and decided it was time for a change.  A graphics company, Pod Design, offered to design us one for free and came up with some ideas.  It took a while to home in on the one that we all agreed on but we have finally made a decision.  All of us at Rainbow Turtle are so excited about this new logo and cannot wait to unveil it next year!

New Website

The current website is outdated which has resulted in some of the features not functioning well. In order to keep up with the movement towards online purchases and to give better customer service we have decided to invest (modestly) in a new site which will incorporate the rebranding of the new logo design.  It will also be easy for us to maintain ourselves. The new website will function in two ways, a Fairtrade information platform for schools, churches and businesses as well as acting as an ecommerce website which will include more product selection for customers to purchase.  It will be a work in progress from January onwards so apologies for any disruptions it may cause.

January Shop Window Display

We can’t wait to get started on our new window display next month!  We will be stripping back and keeping it simple with this window display theme and a meaningful message for the start of the New Year will hopefully be picked up on.

Coffee Machine Proposal

Watch this space for information on how you can get one of these fantastic coffee percolators to allow you to serve ground coffee at the flick of a switch at church services and events. 

Ukuva iAfrica – The Senses of Africa

If you haven’t been to our shop or bought one of our spicy hampers recently, you’ve been missing out!  Ukuva iAfrica products have been introduced at Rainbow Turtle for a few months now and we are delighted with how well it has down with our customers.  What is Ukuva iAfrica you ask, well I’ll tell you! 

Ukuva iAfrica meaning “The Senses of Africa” in Xhosa was founded in Cape Town in 1996 by two travellers.  The recipes for the products were developed from the traveller’s journal named “Recipes from a Rucksack”.  The Ukuva product range includes a variety of different sauces and grinders which has their own unique flavours from all around the country.  The sauces range varies from mild to hot so there’s something for everyone; my favorite is the Malawi Gold hot chilli sauce.  The grinders truly do give you a sense of the different palates from all over the continent; they are a great accompaniment to any meal!  Did you know the inspiration behind the look of the sauce bottles came from the image of African beauty; many of the tribal women wore metal rings or beaded hoops around their necks to show their family’s status in society which holds cultural and social significance.

In January 2012, Turqle Trading adopted the Ukuva iAfrica brand, however prior 2012 the company had helped with the development of some of the Ukuva iAfrica sauces and spice grinders.  Turqle was established in 1997 in Cape Town in order to create sustainable jobs in South Africa through trade in fair and ethical food.  This is achieved by 2.5% of the export price of all Ukuva products going into the Fair Trade Trust.  The Trust is used for the education of the workers and their families in South Africa, for personal development courses and education to prevent HIV/AIDS.  The school fees of the children whose parents work at the factories which produce the Ukuva range is also paid for by the trust.

Why not give the Ukuva iAfrica range a try today, you won’t be disappointed!

Christmas Mayhem!

It’s been a busy month for Rainbow Turtle with our online hamper orders coming in thick and fast which is not surprising since they all have delicious Far Trade products in them.  From our Taste of Africa to our Chocolate Delight Hamper, you will find a great selection of hampers to choose from to send loved ones this Christmas.

We have been kept busy to our shop making sure it’s fully stocked of quality goods ranging from children’s toys, home furnishings, jewellery and much more!  If you still haven’t had the chance to pop along to see our Christmas window display, why not do it this week and come inside to see what we have to offer.

Christmas stalls have been coming in and out of the warehouse non stop over the last few weeks.  We would like to thank all the schools & churches who have requested one of our stalls to run during this Christmas period.  We would also like to thank Gryffe High School, St Vincent's Primary School, Glenifer High School, Our Lady of the Missions Primary School, Lourde’s High School, Castlehead High School and St Luke’s High School who all invited us to run our stalls at their schools and staff rooms.  They all turned out to be a hit with both pupils and teachers and we hope to continue to run more stalls for them in the New Year. 

Our Fairtrade Photo Exhibition made a visit to The University of the West of Scotland and Rainbow Turtle were on hand to run a stall for them and encourage staff and students to take an interest in Renfrewshire’s efforts to support Fairtrade over the last ten years.  I wonder where the exhibition will be heading next.....keep an eye out!

Our Story behind Rainbow Turtle’s Christmas Window Display

In July Liz Cotton travelled to Malawi to lead a team of people who were joining together on a house building project with the charity Habitat for Humanity. Habitat works in many countries throughout the world tackling the massive problem of inadequate housing.  All projects are locally run and teams are invited in to provide labour; encouragement and much needed funds to kick start more projects. Most housing projects become self sustaining as the home owners pay back the cost of the materials over time which feed back into a rolling fund, however this project was for orphans and vulnerable children and so the homes were gifted to the children to give them some security and stability. Liz has done this each year since 2007 and is always challenged and inspired afresh by the families they work with and the team members who leave the comfort of their own homes to help change someone’s life on the other side of the world.

This year was no exception and in the team were some people from Renfrewshire who were joined by folk from all over the UK and beyond. With only two people knowing each other before they left the whole team met up at various airports en route and had already gelled by the time they reached Lilongwe. For most it was the first experience of a trip to Africa but all got stuck in and were aspiring master brickies by the end of the first day.

In just over a week two houses had their roofs on and were nearly ready for occupation and the team were all best buddies and the sadness was as much leaving each other as leaving the community that they had grown so close to in such a short time.

In her other life Liz runs Rainbow Turtle, the Fair Trade organisation which has a retail shop on Gauze Street in Paisley and works with schools, businesses, faith and community groups throughout Renfrewshire to help them in their Fair Trade journeys and quest to making the world a better place.

Inevitably on the build people shared their life stories and Liz learned that Adam, who is based in Berlin, designs window installations for shops in places like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Paris. He had come to Malawi with a strong desire to use his practical skills to benefit others and was really interested in Liz’s work in Renfrewshire. There were many jokes about him coming to do a window display in Paisley but joke has turned to reality and not only had he designed a winter wonderland display of ice caves, icicles and origami animals but he came to oversee the installation.

Such was the bonding of the Malawi team that 17 of the team members came to join him and help build the installation. This had coincided with the Paisley Lights switch on and hopefully helped brighten up a corner of Paisley and highlighted all the wonderful products from foods to gifts, crafts, jewellery, toys and all sorts of Christmas decorations and nativity sets. Rainbow Turtle wants people to make your shopping matter this year and help change the lives of people in some of the poorest parts of our world. 

What are Zamora Plantain Chips?

Zamora Plantain Chips are the first, brand new organic Fairtrade crisps to be introduced in the UK.  The Plantain is produced in Zamora, south of Ecuador and bought over by the Fair Business Alliance Limited, based in Edinburgh.  The aim of Business Alliance is to create new opportunities for small farmers and producers from developing countries in Latin America to improve their livelihood and communities.  This is achieved by supporting them to become part of a fair and ethical supply chain and providing market for buyers in developed countries to support international sustainable trade. 

The Business Alliance has been actively involved in launching and distributing the Fairtrade crisps within the UK.  They have just won the 2013 Great Taste Award with their lightly salted Zamora Plantain Chips beating thousands of other products.  It is the world’s largest and most rigorous food awards which involved almost 10,000 products, 400 judges and thousands of hours of blind tasting.  The crisps were introduced six months after Fairtrade Fortnight took place in March.   Back in September at the Fair Trade Festival in Perth, the public were given the chance to sample the chips as well as the other two flavours including spicy and naturally sweet. 

Did you know Rainbow Turtle sell Zamora Plantain Chips in our shop in Paisley?  Why not pop in and give them a try, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.  The Plantain Chips are a great snack; they are similar to chunky potato crisps but less crispy and are ideal to eat on its own or served with sweet or savoury dips.  My favourite has got to the spicy flavour!

Busy week for Rainbow Turtle!

What a busy week it has been for us! Last week we celebrated the Mod Phaislig coming to town by holding a stall all week at the Piazza shopping centre to promote everything Fairtrade alongside our office neighbours, Just Trading Scotland.  We also helped Paisley celebrate the Mod coming to town by decorating our shop with Mod bunting and posters to get everyone talking about this special event.  The Royal National Mod is an annual event which aims to showcase Gaelic language and culture to the wider world, through music, dance, drama, art and literature.  It was a great success and good to see people from all around the country turn out to support the event.  

As well as this, it was also national chocolate week so what better way to promote our great selection of Divine chocolate than at the Mod event for everyone to sample and buy.  This proved very popular along with the Whiskey & Gin tasting from other stall holders and & Just Trading Scotland's samples of their tasty jams, chutneys and sauces.  With a specially designed Fridge cake recipe by Britain’s celebrity chef and author Sam Stern to help support chocolate week, we at Rainbow Turtle created a hamper using Divine chocolate and other fairly traded ingredient to promote this tasty recipe for those to purchase.  

Thank you to everyone who turned up to support us last week and the volunteers at Rainbow Turtle & Just Trading Scotland who took the time to run the stall. We enjoyed taking part in both celebrations!

Paisley celebrates ten years of Fairtrade!

Did you know last month Paisley celebrated ten years of being a Fairtrade town?  The celebrations took place at Paisley's Town Hall on the 20^th August, organised by the Paisley Fairtrade Partnership with funding from Renfrewshire Council.  We at Rainbow Turtle were delighted to attend this event after all we are Renfrewshire's only dedicated Fair Trade shop!  Invited guests were represented from schools, community groups and local businesses all gathered to celebrate this occasion with us.  The event was essentially to thank all guests for all their hard work raising awareness and promoting Fairtrade over the last ten years.  

The celebrations commenced with Fairtrade afternoon tea and the cutting of the 10^th birthday anniversary cake which was made by our very own Liz Cotton using Fairtrade ingredients of course.  During the event there was an unveiling of a photograph exhibition that included a look back at some of the people, organisations and events over the past ten years which had contributed to Paisley's efforts to the Fairtrade campaign.  In the upcoming months this exhibition will tour Fairtrade events and points of interest in the town for the public to have a look at, so keep an eye out!  Throughout the celebrations the message being sent out was that the Fairtrade campaign is as important now as it was ten years ago.  We need to continue campaigning for Fairtrade in order to help transform developing world producer's lives and by changing one thing in your daily life to Fairtrade you are already making a difference. 

Who makes your breakfast?

"Before you've finished your breakfast this morning, you'll have relied on half the world"
- Martin Luther King

An interesting thought. And a depressing one, when we realise that the people we rely on for our coffee and muesli are often exploited and oppressed by the unfair power balance in world trade.

Breakfast is often remarked as the most important meal of the day; it provides a source of slowly released energy that helps us work throughout the day, gives us an opportunity to eat grains and fruit, boosts our immune system, can help lower cholesterol and staves off the increase in appetite that leads to an eating binge later on in the day. With all these good things about breakfast, it can make you think, is my breakfast good itself?

You can celebrate World Fair Trade Day
on Saturday the 12th of May this year!

The theme for the upcoming World Fair Trade Day (Sat, 12th May) is just that; make your breakfast a good, wholesome and ethical breakfast, full of fairly traded foods and drinks. To support this we are putting a discount on various fairly traded breakfast products in the Rainbow Turtle Shop in advance of World Fair Trade Day, with the hope of encouraging more people to have a Fair Trade breakfast on Saturday the 12th, and to think about their breakfast and where it comes from. The Fairtrade Foundation website has a list of recipes to inspire, and a full guide to having a Fairtrade breakfast!

We are also planning to host a Fair Trade Breakfast on the day, inside the shop, and all are invited to drop by and sample delicious jams and marmalades (on toast), fresh Coffee and Tea, orange juice and quality cereal, all fairly traded!

Breakfast products will start going on sale this Saturday, so If you are thinking of having a Fair Trade breakfast at home, or with a friend, or if you are looking to join us on the 12th, pop by the Rainbow Turtle Shop and have a wee look.

Fairtrade Fortnight 2012!

With Fairtrade Fortnight underway, a variety of events are being held In Renfrewshire in celebration and promotion of Fairtrade. There are also Fairtrade Trails on the go, which means that participants can take literal steps while "Taking a Step" for Fairtrade.

Some examples of individual steps are to serve Fairtrade drinks at your next gathering, whether it is tea, coffee or wine, to swap your brand of biscuits to one with the Fairtrade mark.

The Paisley Fairtrade Trail is working it's way through many outlets in Paisley. When someone purchases Fairtrade goods they can collect stickers and a sticker sheet; followers of the trail will collect as many as they can and return their entries to the Rainbow Turtle shop..

From the Renfrewshire Council Website:

"All the step pledges made in Renfrewshire will then be gathered together and sent off to the Fairtrade Foundation to help them achieve their target."

The Fairtrade Foundation are aiming for 1.5 million steps in 2012, and we are hopeful that many of these steps will be achieved during Fairtrade Fortnight, starting today (27th February) till the 11th March.

People interested in joining in the Paisley Fairtrade Trail can start at one of:

Redss, Glasgow Road

Rainbow Turtle, Gauze Street

Tastebuds, Lawn Street

Paisley Abbey

WRVS Community Cafe, Causeyside Street

CO-OP Foodstore, Piazza Shopping Centre

Paisley Arts Centre

Coffee & Cream, High St

Cardosi's, High Street & Storie Street

As an incentive, there is a chance to win a Fairtrade Prize for taking part of the trial. More links on this Fairtrade Fortnight are available below:

Local Event Listing for Fairtrade Fortnight in Renfrewshire
Read more about the steps being taken in Renfrewshire
Renfrewshire Council page on Facebook.
Register steps you take with the Fairtrade Foundation.

Take a Step for Fairtrade

Fairtrade Fortnight runs from the 27th of February until the 11th of March this year. The Fairtrade Foundation are asking everyone to take a step this Fairtrade fortnight.

"It can be a simple step, Like swapping your tea to Fairtrade, or a bigger step, like asking everyone in your office to do it too."

We have a few ideas for some of the bigger steps, such as holding a sale, taking on a Malawi rice challenge, hosting a Big Brew, joining a Fair Trade Trail (for some literal steps) or even creating your own fair trade trail in your local area.

Of course, we can also help with the little steps too; the Rainbow Turtle shop in Paisley is well stocked with Fairtrade and ethically sourced goods, and we are always on hand to help.

You can download our leaflet for promoting the upcoming Fairtrade Fortnight here: Fairtrade Fortnight with Rainbow Turtle 2012.pdf 
Contact us, or come back here for new information as we confirm the sites and locations for some local Fair Trade Trails.

While you wait, why not visit the Fairtrade foundation website and register to receive the latest campaign news from the Fairtrade foundation.

Hampers Everywhere!

Christmas time is always a blast, and that blast nearly knocks us off our feet as we have to work extra hard and make every sale count. The Rainbow Turtle shop is always at its busiest each Christmas, and many Christmas Fayre sales and hampers leave the warehouse during this time.

A special note to thank all our volunteers for their hard work, particularly during the recent busy time of the year.

After returning from the seasonal break, we could be forgiven for assuming that things would be quiet, as frosty January usually is, however, we had an incredible order for a whole heap of hampers to work on!

An order was made for 23 corporate ethical hampers just towards the end of the year, for shipping in January. The hampers were a unique value and size, and so we had to quickly source hamper baskets and shipping boxes to make the order.

We sourced the baskets from Craft Romania And Fair Trade who Import willow and wooden products from Romanian villages on ethical and fair trade terms.

Many thanks to Craft Romania And Fair Trade, to Oxfam for requesting the order, and to all the producers who working hard all year round; something that reminds us that we all need to work a little harder to help make everything fair.

World Cup 2010

This World Cup will be remembered for two things that happened for the first time; it was the first time the World Cup was played on African soil and it was the first time Spain lifted the trophy. However, the 2010 World Cup will also be remembered for the Rainbow Turtle World Cup Prize Draw!!!

The 'Rainbow Nation' of South Africa did not disappoint. There was joy in the streets and in the stands and who will ever forget the magical sound of the 'vuvuselas' - still ringing in my ears. To celebrate the first World Cup in Africa Rainbow Turtle held a prize draw. The competition was open to anyone who purchased an African product or a product sourced, in part, from Africa. The entrants simply chose the team they thought would win, put their entry slip into the pot and watched to see if their team would make it through.

A fairtrade football - These wereon
promotion in the Rainbow Turtle
shop during the world cup.

The tournament was not without its usual share of upset and controversy. At the group stages we lost two of the world's most household names - France and Italy -holders and runners-up from the 2006 tournament in Germany. Ghana were the only African side to make it through to the knock-out stage, perhaps unsurprisingly as they are powered by Divine Chocolate!

The most popular choice for Rainbow Turtle competition entrants was England so there were disappointments north of the border too as the England side bowed out after a display of poor defending against some spectacular German football.

As more favourites faltered and the entry slips left in the pot became fewer and fewer we were impressed by Uruguay, possibly the surprise side of the tournament. For a country with a population of less than 5million to reach the semi-final was a great achievement, but the Netherlands were too much for them and after Spain dispatched of Germany in the other semi-final, there were only two teams left in it.

The final itself was disappointing, scoreless after full-time, but Iniesta's extra-time goal eventually won Spain the World Cup. Dutch hearts broke across the globe as did those of a few supporters of fair trade who had selected the Netherlands in the Rainbow Turtle Prize Draw and had their eye on the £10 gift voucher prize.

When all was said and done there were four names left in the pot. The winner was John Alexander of Paisley. John said "It's always nice to win. Football's never been my game but Fair Trade is."

Thanks to all who supported African producers at Rainbow Turtle during the World Cup. In this small but significant way we have all helped in the struggle against poverty in Africa and helped to make the first African World Cup work for the people of Africa.

Written by Simon Ruane

Rainbow Turtle chosen for launch of paisley.org.uk Community Champions

 Renfrewshire Council for Voluntary Services (RCVS) and paisley.org.uk are working together to highlight community champions; charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises that are working to make paisley a better place.

From paisley.org.uk;
"RCVS exists to help community and voluntary groups in any way we can for the greater good of Renfrewshire's citizens. From securing funding, training staff and running events to handling payrolls, printing and the creation of promotional films, we aim to help local groups no matter what their needs are."

paisley.org.uk is a popular community-driven website for locally-based people to stay connected to the events of the town, and is a great place to launch articles promoting local champions, to further the promotion of the town.

Paisley Town Hall - View from St Mirren Street, across the White Cart Water. © Copyright Susie Young and licensed for reuse under thisCreative Commons License.

Paisley Town Hall - View from St Mirren Street, across the White Cart Water.
© Copyright Susie Young and licensed for reuse under thisCreative Commons License.

Rainbow Turtle were chosen to be the first entry for the Community Champions section of paisley.org.uk, and we are as proud as ever to be a part of the local community. However, the local community is also a part of us as we rely heavily on a dedicated team of local volunteers; we all work together to continue ethical trading and to raise awareness of ethical approaches to shopping, and their effect on the wider world.

We wish good luck to paisley.org.uk and RCVS in their partnership to promote Community Champions, and would like to thank them for asking Rainbow Turtle to be the subject of the first article in the Community Champions blog.

Links:

·       Blog Article about Community Champions

·       Community Champions section

·       Article about Rainbow Turtle on paisley.org

Clerical Stoles are selling like hot cakes

With the launch of the new online store and Liz hosting a stall at the Methodist Conference in Portsmouth, the Clerical Stoles been selling fast and we are overjoyed.

In Mozambique The Women's Limanyano of the Methodist church work together to sew the Stoles into form. Pedro Langa, an artist based in Maputo, Mozambique, hand paints them with beautiful iconic symbols.

There are stoles in various Liturgical colours with wonderful batik patterns and symbols; some of the stoles are decorated with symbols of cultural significance. Symbols such as the Mackerel - a food of necessity - and the ceremonious African drums, describe various aspects of the challenging life faced by people in Mozambique, and are truly a work of art. The result is an item of clergy-wear which is not only made with fair trade principles, but which also expresses a powerful symbol of culture, strength, and support to those that witness its use in celebration. Each Story stole comes complete with a description of the paintings and their meanings, so that stole owners can discuss the hardships of life in Mozambique, and how a helping hand can be given through trading fairly.

Having an online store gives us the opportunity to make this exciting clergy-wear available to a wider audience; Searching Fairtrade Clerical Stoles brings people to our online store, and people from all over the world can browse, though the delivery system is currently organised for UK sales.

With only half the original stock remaining, we are making preparations to have more stoles made. I for one cannot wait to see more of Pedro's colourful work arrive at Rainbow Turtle's doorstep.

Rainbow Turtle Website Makeover

The Internet - a global network of computers - allows many people to communicate, access information, learn, buy and sell from around the world, one home, workplace or cafe to another. Businesses and organisations across the UK develop Website's everyday to provide services and information for their clients and the public.

One of the website concept designs. Click image for a full-sized view.

A new Rainbow Turtle website has been in production for the past 2 months, which involved a gathering of information, ideas and prospective designs. Tony, with his experience in computing technology and digital art, began working on designs and content structure; however, as the required information and content began to grow, the designs were remodelled to accommodate new photographs, products and in particular usability for expected website visitors.

This was no easy task, as organising all the information and content to be accessible from different people's perspectives required deep thinking and discussion among Rainbow Turtle colleagues; many ideas had the potential to make one aspect of usability better while conflicting with another, and understanding and accepting the balance between different ideas was found to be the most successful route.

A similar approach was adopted when considering the look and feel of the website; we needed something that provided an accurate presentation of Rainbow Turtle, balancing boldness in colours with a clean, professional and minimal look. Various designs were considered for their strengths and weaknesses between staff and the management committee. At fist, there seemed to be no balance between different feelings towards the contrasting designs; however everyone's ideas began to coalesce into form when Sam, a prominent volunteer at the warehouse, brought fourth a beautiful collection of photographs of the Rainbow Turtle Shop in Paisley (gallery available here).

Tony was able to use the photographs to create potential backgrounds, and designed a clean and readable white page to sit inside shop photographs. With a simple Black, grey and white colour scheme, pages were made very readable and pliable to a large variety of background pictures. A touch of colour through a rainbow strip under the title completed the theme, and the new Rainbow Turtle website was born!

The new website has been developed for ecommerce - the online selling market - a perfect way of selling Pedro's Clerical Stoles, and a new avenue for Rainbow Turtle to take in promoting trading fairly through fair trade business practices.

However, like all web-technology we remain vigilant in case anything goes wrong, and are still making little updates here and there to further improve the website and keep it in fashion! Please contact us if you have any comments regarding the website, or if you spot anything that needs tweaking ;)

We've got that fantastic Fairtrade Fortnight Friday feeling!

In 1997 the Fairtrade Foundation pioneered an event known as Fairtrade Fortnight, in our very own Scotland. This was an event to promote ethical trading values and raise awareness of trading fairly; the campaign was successful, and was celebrated to the rest of the United Kingdom in 1998.

Fairtrade Fortnight has since grown to be celebrated in many other countries worldwide, and provides an exciting time of year in which many Fairs, Fashion Shows, Fetes and food tastings are made in encouragement of Fairtrade products.

This year, Fairtrade fortnight was termed "The Big Swap" and was celebrated February 22nd to March 7th, creating an opportunity for all involved to enhance the profile of Fairtrade in the local community and further afield. Schools throughout the country work on projects to generate interest and raise concern for the younger generation and their families.

During this time of the year, Rainbow Turtle took on an exciting (and slightly terrifying) challenge of providing service above and beyond normal duties; sales and orders increased, and sale or return orders skyrocketed. We worked hard each day to manage order information, safely keep on top of stock, host stalls at local events, arrange and pack stall after stall for local schools and churches, and accept incoming requests. Throughout this time, the Rainbow Turtle shop remained open for sale, promoting Fairtrade in Paisley (with some giant inflatable Cups, I might add).


Teamwork was an essential part of success, and we couldn't have made it through without the generous help of our volunteers, both in the shop and in the warehouse. The busy fortnight also became a time for new staff Tony and Simon to learn a great deal about Rainbow Turtle's products and administration, as well as an opportunity to meet the clients and volunteers who all work hard to promote Fairtrade.

This year 30 million people knew about Fairtrade Fortnight, making 10 million people more than last; with Fairtrade Fortnight over, we can rejoice in the success of spreading the word of Fairtrade, as well as making it through and out to the other side. We can also begin to think about next years Fairtrade Fortnight, and hope that it is even more successful than this year's!

Links:

·       The Fairtrade Foundation BigSwap page (2010)

·       The Fairtrade Foundation page about Fairtrade Fortnight 2011

Rainbow turtle Completes The 90kg Kilombero Rice Challenge

On Saturday 25th July we completed the Just Trading Scotland 90kg Kilombero Rice Challenge in the shop. The challenge, to sell 90 kilos of fairly traded Malawian Kilombero rice, represents a great way to make tangible the impact we can have on Developing World producers by buying fairly traded products.

If a Malawian rice farmer sells 90kilos of rice at a fair price he/she makes enough money to send one of their children to high school for a year. Only 1 in 3 children can currently afford to go to high school in Malawi and as education is a vital tool in overcoming poverty, any increase in this statistic is extremely valuable.

The challenge has been taken on by many individuals and groups already but this was the first time Rainbow Turtle Shop had done it. With the 45th Anniversary of Malawian Independence being celebrated this July, we felt it was a great opportunity to promote the trade links established by Just Trading Scotland - the partnership organisation between Rainbow Turtle and The Coach House Balmore - and Malawian farmers.

Celebrating the success of the Rice Challenge.

We created a vibrant window display, handed out flyers around the town and received valuable support from M.S.Ps, Renfrewshire Council and the Paisley Daily Express. The promotion paid off, attracting many new customers and thanks to the support and generosity of all our customers, both new and regular, we managed to sell all 90 kilos within the month.

The rice is always available to buy at the shop and anyone interested in taking on the challenge and helping to eat someone out of poverty can get details from www.justtradingscotland.co.uk

Provost's Community Awards

On Friday, 27 March , Provost Celia Cameron hosted the 2009 Renfrewshire Council Provost's Community Awards. This was a gala evening to showcase much positive action taking place in our community. The event took place at the Normandy Hotel where nominees and nominators all enjoyed a celebratory meal.

For the first time there was a category among the 7 awards for Fairtrade: "The Spirit of Fairtrade Award". This was sponsored by the Piazza Shopping Centre. There were 4 groups short-listed for this award.

The Abbey Cafe, Paisley 

Bishopton Faire Trade Village 

The Junction, Lochwinnoch 

Rainbow Turtle, Paisley 

It was very exciting when Rainbow Turtle was announced as THE WINNER and Colum Scriven accepted the lovely trophy on behalf of Rainbow Turtle.

This award recognizes the work done by all connected with Rainbow Turtle whether working in or buying from the shop, campaigning or supporting the many and various Fairtrade Fortnight events.

The real winner of the evening, however, was Fairtrade itself because for each of the shortlisted groups there was a well narrated video and every one of these sent out the same message, namely that Fairtrade is about justice and all stressed the difference that we can each make by asking for and using fair trade products whenever possible.

Please do come along to the shop and see the lovely trophies for yourself which are on display in the shop window; the large trophy we have for the year when perhaps we shall win it again! and the smaller one we keep. Remember the "we" is you! This award truly is for all who have been involved in any way during the life of Rainbow Turtle. Well done!