From the 26th February till the 11th March, establishments across the world are showing their support for Fairtrade. The Write Workshop are joining in with the support to ensure disadvantaged farmers across the globe are not being exploited. We will be providing fairtrade snacks and drinks on the wild-life themed event on the 6th March, and will have a donation box for any contributions from members.

Fairtrade work directly with businesses and trade unions to help farmers in developing countries have a sustainable future. This involves working towards better pay, better working conditions and better deals with the farmers, so they can not only support themselves but their families too. You can help by simply purchasing fairtrade products (marked with the fairtrade logo). Products include:

• Chocolate such as Cadbury’s and Galaxy
• Coffee (Fairtrade actually started in response to a collapse of world coffee prices in the late 80s meaning Mexican farmers could no longer earn a living)
• The vast majority of bananas (look out for the FT sticker)
• Tea (plantation workers invest almost half their premium just on housing, education and healthcare)
• Cotton (in 2014 Fairtrade certified producer organisations sold an average of 43% on fairtrade terms)
• Flowers (FT work with at least 48,500 workers across eight developing countries)
• Gold (Non-fairtrade workers have to use mercury when mining, which inflicts serious health problems on them)
• Sugar (there are roughly 63,000 cane farmers working with fairtrade)

This is just a glimpse of the work Fairtrade do, for more information go to: https://fairtrade.org.uk/What-is-Fairtrade/What-Fairtrade-does

Thank you for reading!