Fairtrade Pulborough Report – November 2020

Pulborough Fairtrade Group

November 2020 Update

At the AGM in January, all three churches shared their plans for special events and services during Fairtrade Fortnight. Miq Kelland has continued to run Traidcraft stalls at St Mary’s Church, which are very well supported. St Mary’s School sent details of special assemblies and activities to be held throughout the fortnight.

Our plans included a Fairtrade Raffle at the Village Market on 22nd February; a Smoothie Bike at Greenhouse on Stane Street on Saturday 29th February, along with Fairtrade cake tasting; serving Fairtrade cakes at Tea Spot Craft Café and Caring Café on 24^th February and 5^th March respectively. Fortunately, all of these events were able to go ahead before the introduction of the Lockdown on 23^rd March.

2020 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Fairtrade Foundation and, to mark this, all Fairtrade Town and Village councils were asked to renew their commitment to supporting Fairtrade. To this end, we submitted a question to Pulborough Parish Council which will appear on the agenda for the November meeting. If this is agreed, we will be in a position to apply for renewal of Fairtrade Village status for Pulborough.

Within the constraints of Covid19 regulations, we have continued to meet with the other West Sussex Fairtrade Groups on Zoom, sharing ideas, supporting campaigns, and encouraging each other as best we can. It gave us a real boost to learn that, after several years of inactivity, Chichester now has two new Green Party City Councillors who are very keen to revive Chichester Fairtrade. WSCC recently passed a motion to continue to support Fairtrade for at least the next five years and announced the following plans.

“Fairtrade Fortnight this year will see all four hubs (Chichester, Horsham, Bognor Regis and Worthing) having Fairtrade displays and raffles; Meals on Wheels will again offer a free Fairtrade item during the fortnight; contracts for schools are already asked to include Fairtrade items where possible and a new contract for fruit and veg with a local West Sussex company will incorporate some Fairtrade items; a new Fairtrade West Sussex information leaflet is in production and talks with WSCC are ongoing with regard to hosting our website and adding ‘We are a Fairtrade County’ to road signs.”

Fairtrade West Sussex’s ongoing campaigns are to try to increase the number of Fairtrade towns and villages in the county – members from Adur, East Grinstead and Horsham will approach and offer support to Steyning, Hurstpierpoint and Crawley.