Fairtrade Fortnight Round-up & Home Start AGM

Fairtrade Fortnight

Fairtrade Fortnight ends tomorrow, and it’s been an amazing couple of weeks. We are going out on a real high as today we have a very special speaker visiting Walsall – a cocoa farmer called Leocadie. Leocadie visited North Walsall Primary Academy this morning and got a fantastic response from the children. She is now meeting colleagues at our Waterfront Office and will talk to customers at our Walsall town centre store this afternoon.

Leocadie, Cocoa Farmer and pupils from North Walsall Primary Academy

Leocadie lives in the Côte d’Ivoire, on the Ivory Coast in West Africa and is a member of her local Fairtrade Co-operative. She owns her own cocoa farm which is around a hectare in size (about the size of a rugby field). She is the Chairwoman of the Women’s Society in her local village and has been a cocoa farmer since 1985, when she inherited the land from her grandfather.

Leocadie with the students and Laura from the Fairtrade Foundation

Life in the Ivory Coast is very hard and Leocadie has seven children to support on her own, four girls and three boys. Without Fairtrade, like a lot of women involved with producing the chocolate we all love to eat, Leocadie would bring home a wage of just 74p a day.  That is well below the world’s global poverty line. But thanks to Fairtrade she gets a living wage which enables her to support her children, providing them with food, clothes and schoolbooks.

Too often when we shop, we don’t think about the people behind the products we buy or the journey from farm to fork. Leocadie and millions of women like her are the real face of Fairtrade. That’s why we promote Fairtrade so much – it offers farmers and growers in some of the poorest countries in the world the chance to lift themselves out of poverty. 

I am proud that across the 2 weeks of the campaign we’ve generated over 100 #1Change pledges which is a fantastic result including lots of colleagues. For the first time, our charity partners and suppliers have also joined in this year making their own pledges. The campaign has featured prominently in our Food stores with some great displays, we’ve had lots of Fairtrade bake-offs, film shows and treasure hunts with our partner schools, including Fairtrade breakfasts at our nurseries.

A few of the fantastic activities during Fairtrade Fortnight

We’ve also had some great engagement online including Twitter activity and over 25,000 people reached using our Facebook posts. I was particularly impressed that the youngest person to make #1Change goes to our Cainscross nursery in Gloucestershire and is only 17 months old! So here is a picture of Jackson with his Fairtrade bananas. Well done Jackson! If you haven't yet made your #1Change for fairtrade click here.

 

Young Jackson making his #1Change pledge at 17 months old!

 

Home-Start AGM

On Wednesday I attended the Annual General Meeting of a charity called Home-Start, which is based in the Wyre Forest Regional Community in Worcestershire. Home-Start supports families with young children who are facing challenging conditions at home or are struggling to cope. It offers confidential support, friendship and practical help, a unique service delivered by trained and supported local volunteers. It also helps to boost the confidence of young parents and help their children get a better start in life. Talking to some of the young mothers there, I was really impressed with how they have dealt with the challenges facing them from family breakdown to mental health issues.  We are currently in the 3rd year of our partnership with them and already one colleague, Norma White, has trained to be a Home-Start Volunteer and I’m delighted to say that two further colleagues are currently undergoing their training.

We also received a nice poem from the Chairwoman, Megan Weaver who wrote a poem to say thank you to Midcounties for their support. This wasn't the first time it happened but when I was at the Christmas Home-Start event in December, one of the mothers attending also wrote a poem to show her thanks to Midcounties. Have a read of the humbling message below and to find out more about the charity click here.

 The thank-you poem from the charity Home Start

 

Our London Marathon runners

 

The Midcounties team running the London Marathon this year has now been announced and I wanted to add my best wishes to Helena Reilly, Peter Lockey, Stuart Newman, Nick Milton, Steve Graham and Toby Moy (see above left to right). If you have not already done so have a look at the amusing video, they produced announcing the team when they all dressed up as Midcounties characters. Running a marathon of 26.2 miles is a gruelling experience and all the runners have already been putting in the miles practicing for the big day. They are again running for our charity partner, the Outward-Bound Trust, who do some incredible work helping young people from difficult backgrounds develop life skills through completing outdoor challenges. This weekend there will also be the first “give at the till” session in our Food stores so if you are doing your shopping this weekend please consider giving or you can sponsor them online by clicking here.

 

Community Funding applications

I encourage people to enter the Community Funding Grants today, as it is the last day to apply for one of our Community grants of up to £2k. So if you know of a good cause that needs financial help please encourage them to put in an application here.

 

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