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!

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