10 ways to support Fairtrade Fortnight Everybody's favourite celebration of all things Fairtrade - Fairtrade Fortnight - is upon us (Monday 6 to Sunday 19 March), so we thought it was high time we got involved. The theme this year is to 'Make Fairtrade Your Habit' and include Fairtrade products in your everyday shop. Buying Fairtrade will help to ensure that poor farmers get a fair price for their goods, and will help to lift them out of poverty. So, we thought we'd give you 10 quick'n'easy ways to support Fairtrade Fortnight... 1. Buy more Fairtrade stuff! Make sure you fill your trolley with Fairtrade tea, coffee and sugar, and remember that there are 1,300 certified Fairtrade products out there to choose from. Have a look on the Fairtrade Foundation website for some ideas. 2. Cook a Fair Feast with your mates Help to raise awareness of Fairtrade (and show your friends that Fairtrade = tasty) with a special dinner. You could come up with all sorts, including Fairtrade avocado salad, curry with Fairtrade rice and Fairtrade chocolate mousse for pudding, all washed down with Fairtrade wine and fruit juice. 3. Swap your mid-morning choccie bar for Dubble You might know by now that we think Dubble is the just about the best chocolate bar in the universe. It's crunchy, chunky and perfect with your mid-morning cuppa. What's more, it's totally Fairtrade and is made by the first farmer-owned chocolate company in the UK. Brilliant! 4. Have a Fairtrade 'coffee morning' Help to raise awareness about Fairtrade at work, college or in your university halls with a 'coffee morning' (or maybe 'taster session' cos it sounds a bit less WI). You get people to sample Fairtrade coffee (for example, from café direct), tea and homemade Fairtrade cakes, and they get tasty grub. Simple. 5. Spread the word about Fairtrade Tell the world about Fairtrade (or at least your mum and dad). Send one of our Make Trade Fair campaign e-cards. 6. Sign the Big Noise petition to Make Trade Fair As well as buying Fairtrade products, we need to put pressure on world leaders to change trade rules to lift millions of people out of poverty. You can help by adding your name to the Big Noise petition - and join the 18 million people worldwide who want to Make Trade Fair. 7. Spot the ball and play Fairtrade footie If you like your football, play our magnificent spot the ball competition, and be in with a chance of winning a Fairtrade football signed by a sports star. You could also organise your own game of Fairtrade 6-a-side using balls from www.fairdealtrading.com. 8. Dress Fairtrade Fairtrade cotton is the very latest in high street fashion - get your Fairtrade t-shirts from Generation Why and from all kinds of online shops. You can also make your bed with Fairtrade certified cotton sheets. 9. Buy something Fairtrade from an Oxfam shop Your local Oxfam shop will stock all kinds of Fairtrade gubbins - from wooden toys to Peruvian handicrafts, and from delicious honey to fabulous new jewellery. Find your local store and have a look around... 10. Go to a Fairtrade event near you There are loads of events going on around the country, and most of them involve gobbling lovely Fairtrade grub - have a look at the Fairtrade Foundation website for what's going on near you. So there we have it - let us know how you're supporting Fairtrade Fortnight below... posted at 1:23 PM | Permalink 10 comments   Comments: GenerationWhy and Oxfam accept no responsibility for the content of comments in the Blog. Hey... I've recently launched a Make Trade Fair Campaign in my town. As part of Fairtrade Fortnight the steering group is hoping to hold a stall on the high st. The stall aims to work with the local Oxfam shop to inform and educate the community about Fairtrade. We don't want it to be all talk and no action so, we're offering food tasters and also selling fairtrade handicrafts to show how vast the fairtrade market is! Good luck to those who are organising an event for Fairtrade Fortnight too! Peace out, Sara By  phunkyhippie, February 27, 2006 11:17 AM   Staff and students at Liverpool Hope University and the University of Liverpool are planning to live on a dollar a day for between one and seven days to highlight the plight of a third of the world's population who are forced to do this due to economic inequality. This will be our third year and monies raised through sponsorship and donations will be handed directly to organizations such as FairTrade and Oxfam who strive to make this a better world... For further information (and recipes!) please contact alice.bennett@liverpool.ac.uk By  Alice Bennett, February 28, 2006 12:22 PM   Great stuff! Good luck with these - Happy Fairtrade Fortnight! By  Generation Why, March 01, 2006 8:57 AM   York has loads going on! At least at the uni anyway! Today we had fairtrade wine tasting, tomorrow we have a free gig. We also have a film showing and a tea party to name but a few of our fantastic events! By  Anonymous, March 07, 2006 5:32 PM   It all sounds great! If you send us photos and a short paragraph of what you got up to, we'll get it up on the site! By  Generation Why, March 07, 2006 5:41 PM   My school is selling fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate and such for two weeks. All money will go to the Fair Trade Foundation. By  Anonymous, March 07, 2006 6:28 PM   I've bought an event pack and left posters and leaflets along with the chocs and tea/coffee in my office kitchens. It's shocking how many people here didn't know about Fairtrade! By  Anonymous, March 08, 2006 12:32 PM   Les ONG c'est bien, la famine pas bien!!! Vive la France By  Anonymous, March 09, 2006 7:28 AM   By subscribing to New Consumer Magazine - it has lots of information about what you can do once Fairtrade Fortnight is over. The Fairtrade fashion is pretty cool in the current edition and the front cover superheroes are most excellent. www.newconsumer.org By  Anonymous, March 09, 2006 5:01 PM   Hey Everyone, If you are holding a Fairtrade event over the fortnight, why not enter it in Oxfam's small, but perfectly formed, Fairtrade Competition and you could win a small, but perfectly filled, Fairtrade hamper! It's easy to enter... click on the link below to download a competition form. Good luck! By  Get Active & Change Minds, March 14, 2006 3:24 PM   Post a Comment

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