Logo by Green Hat Design
It’s exactly 100 days until Fair Trade campaigners and organisations head to Bristol to explore ‘Fair Trade for Sustainability’ at the 9th International Fair Trade Towns Conference.
To celebrate Fairtrade Bristol are hosting a blogfest, this is our contribution:
Sustainability and Fairtrade are two of fairandfunky’s favourite things! We deliver a range of workshops to schools and community groups that focus on Fairtrade, recycling and the environment. Our mission statement is: ‘To empower people to take their own little steps to change the world.’
From the simple steps of walking to work, or using recycled paper, to buying Fairtrade and growing your own vegetables, each of us has the power to make a difference in the world around us, both locally and globally. These actions may just be small, but added together make real change.
Take recycling. Each year the average family uses 6 trees worth of paper. Imagine a classroom of 30 children. That is 30 families, each using 6 trees. That’s 180 trees per classroom, per year. That is a lot of trees. If each of those families took their own steps to recycle and reuse, together, we can protect our local environments which in turn has a global affect. Together, we can change the world.
Take Fairtrade. Fairtrade guarantees a fair price is paid to farmers and pays an added premium to invest in community projects: to build new schools, improve water supplies, invest in school buses, training and education for farmers and their families and more. Buying a Fairtrade product means the lives of farmers and their communities can be improved and each of us has the power to do just that. Buy Fairtrade and change lives.
Thanks to a partnership with Divine Chocolate fairandfunky has been able to combine recycling and Fairtrade in a number of school workshops. During the fairandfunky Fairtrade Conference for Schools students decorated a plant pot with Fairtrade packaging (from Divine Chocolate!) and planted their own seeds. The students were asked to look closely at the Fairtrade Mark: “What do you see?” “What colours can you see?”
Through discussion, students discovered that the Fairtrade logo represents the world and the people who live in it. The blue is the sea and sky, the green is the land, and the black is a person with their hand held high. Each child used a Fairtrade logo on their plant pot to be reminded and encouraged to think about the people behind the product, the people who grow our food.
Logo by Green Hat Design
In July, fairandfunky will be combining recycling and Fairtrade again, to animate the logo for the International Fairtrade Towns Conference. We’re very excited about bringing sustainability and Fairtrade together for people across the world to engage with, and to share their ideas for steps to change the world. We look forward to seeing you at the Conference. In the meantime you can keep up to date with all fairandfunky news on facebook, twitter, Instagram and Pinterest!
Tweets by @fair_funky
