Fairtrade Fortnight 2020: Monday 24 February – Sunday 8 March

We loved seeing all the amazing events hosted by groups, schools, churches, businesses across Wales. There were coffee mornings, art exhibitions, Fairtrade product tastings in the pub and a giant banana split.

Fair Trade Wales took Jenipher Wettaka Sambazi, a coffee producer from Uganda to events, schools and churches in Barry, Monmouthshire, Bangor and Anglesey. Jenipher shared her story with over 300 people about life in Uganda, how she grows coffee and how the Fairtrade premiums support her to empower herself and other women in her community.

We held an event in the Senedd where almost 30 Assembly Ministers came to talk about Fairtrade and to Jenipher about coffee production and her life in Uganda.

Our She Deserves Fairtrade: Women in leadership event in Cardiff was attended by over 85 people and our fantastic panel of women speakers discussed gender inequality, campaigning for change and more. We had delicious Fairtrade refreshments on offer too, from beer, chocolate, coffee, nuts and homemade ice lollies from Pop Cycle.

During Fairtrade fortnight, we continued our mission to raise awareness of the importance of buying Fairtrade products to ensure everyone along the supply chain receives a fair price for the work they are doing.

Following on from 2019 we focused on the campaign for a living income to become a reality for cocoa farmers in West Africa. A typical cocoa farmer in Cote d’Ivoire lives on around 74p a day despite £1.86 being the amount a farmer in West Africa needs to earn each day in order to achieve a living income. News published in Fairtrade Fortnight highlighted that women often earn as little as 23p.

This means that almost all cocoa farmers live in poverty. The situation for women is even worse. Women have the responsibility of not only planting, harvesting and transporting the cocoa beans to market but also looking after children, carrying water, collecting wood, cooking and cleaning for the family.  This is why the Fair Trade movement were focusing on women during the fortnight and raising awareness with many of our #shedeserves campaigns and events.

If  you weren’t able to attend events and still would like to know what we got up to then you can see our highlights! There are also pictures of the Senedd and She Deserves event.

Still want to support Fairtrade?

1. Buy Fairtrade – make sure you look for the fairtrade mark on products and know you’re helping communities across the world to live a fairer life. There are your local fairtrade shops and Traidcraft.

2. Sign up – You can sign up to our monthly newsletter for the latest news and information straight to your inbox.

3. Join in – there are local Fairtrade groups you can join across Wales and help promote the movement in your community.