Another busy week, canvassing in the late afternoons and early evenings followed by Community meetings and events later in the evenings.
Last Wednesday evening I attended the World Development Movement’s pub quiz in the West of the Moon pub in Ayr. This was part of the Fairtrade Fortnight programme. There were eighteen teams taking part and my team won the prize for finishing in eighteenth place. It was very kind of the MC not to describe our prize as the booby prize for finishing last. Our excuse is that we only had three team members and the other teams all had at least six members. Next year we will do better.
In my role as Council spokesperson for Fairtrade I presented the prizes and was privileged to do so.
The quiz had two rounds dedicated to Fairtrade and Poverty. Some of the statistics that emerged from these questions were both shocking and thought provoking.
This being Fairtrade Fortnight much of my time has been taken up by Fairtrade events. On Friday I attended a conference being held in Kilmarnock which focused on how the Fairtrade ethos could be expanded and developed and how Scotland could move forward to becoming a Fairtrade Nation. Oxfam have been charged with taking forward the Fairtrade agenda in Scotland’s quest to be become a Fairtrade Nation. They have met with some like minded organisations and taken a decision to set up a working group charged with creating a Fairtrade Forum to be held no later than September 2007.
Last night I attended the celebration of Ayr’s achievement in attaining Fairtrade Town status. It was heart-warming to hear from Mr Conrad James, a Fairtrade banana producer fro St Lucia, who gave a very humorous presentation telling us about difference that Fairtrade has made to his community. His farm produces high quality bananas and in return he gets a fair price for them. Over and above that his community gets a Fairtrade premium which is used to benefit the community. Each month all of the Fairtrade farmers gather to meet and discuss how they might spend this premium to best benefit their community. The projects range from building a fence around the local school to prevent children running on to the very busy road which passes the school through to providing equipment for the local hospital and many other diverse projects.
If anyone is interested in getting involved in making Prestwick a Fairtrade town then get in touch with me and if there is enough interest then we will meet and decide whether or not to take this forward.
That’s all for this week, there will be another update next week.
Thursday, 8 March 2007
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1 comment:
Welcome to the world of blogging Hugh.
Not sure if you remember but I'm the guy that had been trying to get our local party to embrace e-democracy a little more - with varying degrees of success I might add.
Glad to see you're making your own strides anyway!
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