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!

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

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!