Mandy Catto

When I first started buying Fairtrade products I did it because I knew it was the ethical thing to do and I rarely enjoyed the products – the coffee and chocolate tasted pretty grim! How things have changed in the last ten years! Buying fairly traded goods is a tasty and relatively easy option as more and more shops and manufacturers are going for the big ‘FT’ badge. I love Divine chocolate bars, I cheered loudly when Cadbury’s Dairy Milk joined the club and I have just heard that Ben and Jerry’s icecream and KitKats are about to go 100%.
Despite the products sometimes being a few pence more expensive, public loyalty to Fairtrade in 2009’s tough economic climate has lead to double digit growth as Fairtrade sales reach £800m.

Fairtrade Fortnight 2010 runs from 22nd February until 7th March. You can get some useful and up-to-date information on the FairTrade website – www.fairtrade.org.uk
Traidcraft are also asking supporters to make the most of this time and are focusing on tea. They are encouraging people to hold Big Brew events and serve Fairtrade tea and coffee and make donations to make a difference to tea producers’ lives. There are currently 200 Big Brews happening, where 19055 cups of Fairtrade tea and coffee will be served and £11603 is expected to be raised.
www.traidcraft.co.uk
This might be the perfect opportunity to ask your neighbours round for an informal event. Or maybe send a quick text round the friends you have as contacts on your mobile and invite them for a cuppa next week, it doesn’t have to be in a perfect house with home bakes. Most people would be delighted with a hot drink, a flapjack or some chunks of chocolate and a warm welcome. For those with daytime work commitments an evening get together might be a better option – traidcraft make some good fairtrade wine before finishing off the evening with the Big Brew style cup of tea.
We have some exciting news about our favourite fairly traded jewellery supplier, Achkiy – they are almost ready to launch their new website. You can be sure that we will give you the details here as soon as we have them.

Activate has enjoyed many years of events in the Royal Court Hotel in Coventry. We are using the Oasis Centre in London for this year’s training day before moving to the Four Pillars Hotel in Cirencester for the 2011 weekend away. As part of our previous contract we have a £500 voucher for the Royal Court hotel which we are offering to one of you, our supporters. We would like to hear your ideas of how you might use this voucher with your group of friends. Read on to discover how you can enter our competition…

Maybe you want to run an event with a speaker and a breakfast. Perhaps you would like to invite a group of nonchurched women to a spa-pamper day and include a lunch. You might have already been thinking of booking a room for an evening dinner with entertainment and Coventry is near enough for you to use.Once we hear your ideas we will award the voucher to the best idea that uses the occasion to reach out to others with the love of Jesus, then it will be up to the winner to liase with the Royal court as to costings, dates and details. The closing date is the end of March and we will let all participants know within a week of our decision, the voucher could be used between April and November 2010. We would then hope that the winning entry is able to write up their experience for our website. Post your story and idea below and make sure that you also put your email and name onto the contact form. We look forward to hearing from you…

The Activate Dream team recently had the opportunity to meet Carl Beech, the national director of CVM. We realised how much we have in common in wanting to reach out to others with the love of Jesus in culturally relevant ways. Whilst we beilieve that our calling is to reach out to women, Carl and the CVM team are pioneering many innovative events, resources and networks for men. We hope to be able to partner together in some future training events. If you want to connect some of the men you know with CVM then click onto their website below.