Fairtrade Fortnight & Finding Turbo Turtle!

To celebrate the start of Fairtrade Fortnight on Monday we have got a lot of exciting activities planned! This year we are asking colleagues, members and customers to help us spread the message about Fairtrade by supporting our 1Change, Choose Fairtrade campaign.

All we are asking is for you to replace one item in your weekly shop for a Fairtrade alternative and then tell us about it. Simply register your pledge on Monday and then post a picture of your 1Change on our social media. There are lots of simple ways to make 1Change, such as choosing Fairtrade tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, flowers, wine or a host of other products - see here! By choosing Fairtrade you could also be in with a chance of winning 1 of 25 x £25 vouchers to spend in your local food store. We have already written to our members and 500 charity partners asking them to make 1Change so look out for their pictures next week on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Our Food stores will again be doing a wide range of activities including offers on Fairtrade products and a swipe and win competition for customers to win a Fairtrade hamper. Plus on the final Friday of Fairtrade Fortnight, 6 March, we are being visited by a cocoa farmer from the Ivory Coast of Africa.

All our trading groups are taking part as well as our Regional Communities - there will be more details of their activities on Colleagues Connect next week. So please help us this Fairtrade Fortnight by making your 1Change from Monday.

 

Little Pioneers and Turbo Turtle

I was somewhat taken aback this week when walking through the offices at Warwick and coming across these heads perched upon some filing cabinets. Of course, the heads belong to our wonderful Little Pioneers’ childcare characters. The primary purpose of the Little Pioneers mascots is to help build and strengthen the brand for the Group, alongside raising local nursery profiles. However, in their current poor condition, the Little Pioneers can’t possibly be seen in public.

 

Childcare sent out an appeal for their safe return over a week ago and nurseries answered their call but 3 of them came back dismembered and all of them displayed some form of poor care!  They’re off for a bath (dry cleaners) but we’re desperate to reunite them with their clothes.

• Scantily dressed Ela needs her trousers

• Charlie’s chest is bare as we desperately await the return of his shirt

• Poor Ping has been left with no undergarments

As well as the safe return of their existing outfits we’d love to hear from any colleagues who fancy themselves a bit of budding children’s fashion designer and or tailor/seamstress as we’d really like to get the Little Pioneers some new outfits made.

Childcare are also on the hunt for talented colleagues with some artistic skills. The Little Pioneer characters are illustrations so anytime we want to show them doing something such as dressing up, holding hands, eating, or in fact doing anything little children do we have to get new illustrations made. If any colleagues would enjoy the opportunity to get drawing whilst playing a part in developing the Little Pioneers, then please get in touch by leaving a comment below and their agent will be in touch.

Finally, someone very special has gone missing from the business - our very own Turbo Turtle. He has now been missing for a number of weeks and we are all worried about his safety and well-being. Despite extensive enquiries on behalf of the Community Team we have not been able to locate him. As well as being a much-loved character who has turbo-charged a lot of campaigns on behalf of Midcounties, he is also not cheap to replace.

We all want to see Turbo Turtle come back home safely so I’m offering up a bottle of Fairtrade wine to the colleague who can help us find him. If you know where he is please leave me a message below.

 

Supported interns

I wanted to add my congratulations to our supported interns Ellie, Patrick and Thomas who graduated last week and have now started on their second placement with us.  There was a fantastic event at Co-op House last week to celebrate - click here to see the pictures.

 

Pulse Survey

Just a reminder that the Pulse survey closes on Monday so if you haven’t already completed yours please do so before then, click here for more information.

 

And finally...

I want to say a huge congratulations to Co-op Travel who have been listed in the Top 10 travel brands in the UK, as ranked by YouGov. They ranked over 1500 brands by asking customers the question "Would you recommend the brand to a friend or colleague?”, the research being carried out over 12 months last year. Well done all!

That’s all for my blog this week. If you enjoyed it, why not comment below by signing in?