Fair Trade Clothes Show – Saturday 23rd February 2008
An opportunity to come, view and purchase food, fashions and fair trade goods at Woodbridge Methodist Church, St John’s Street, Woodbridge.
From 10.00am there will be stalls selling and giving information about fairly traded goods. Light refreshments will also be served all day.
The evening will include two Fair Trade Clothes Shows (starting at 6.30pm and 8.00pm) with a catwalk and local personalities showing off the latest fashions made from Fairtrade and other fairly traded materials. These require tickets priced at £5.00 each, available from the following places:
The Singhing Piper, 1, Gobbitts Yard, Woodbridge
The Georgian Coffee House, 47A The Thoroughfare, Woodbridge
St Mary’s Shop, Market Hill, Woodbridge
For more details or to volunteer to help, please call 01473 626858 or 01728 621225.
Café Noel – Saturday 24th November 2007
Café Noel is one of two Fairtrade coffee mornings held every year at St John’s Church in Woodbridge. The most recent, on Saturday 24th November 2007, was an excellent opportunity to find out more about Fairtrade in a relaxed and friendly café style environment. There were stalls selling goods from Traidcraft, Tearfund, and FairPlay Seed. Argentinean crafts, an environment stand and Christian book and music stalls we also there. Due to how popular they were previously, we (Fairtrade For Woodbridge) were selling official Fairtrade footballs and rugby balls at cost price on our own stand. Naturally, Fairtrade refreshments and homemade cakes were available to sit down with and enjoy.
Face painting was another popular attraction for the children (but not just the children!) and a toy corner was available for the little ones. A local band called Joshua’s Army also added to the atmosphere.
The morning was a real success, with a a comfortably full church throughout the morning. We would like to thank all who came and especially those who helped in so many different ways. Our next Fairtrade coffee morning at St John’s will be in May 2008. Please check back here in April for details.
Farlingaye Fairtrade Footballs!
On the first day of Fairtrade Fortnight 2006, our chairman Anthony Lumley went to present 20 FAIRTRADE Marked footballs to Farlingaye High School. He was met by sixth form students and John Yorke, head of P.E. The balls he presented were handmade in Singapore, and each bears the FAIRTRADE Mark, indicating they were made in safe and stable working conditions by people who were paid fairly and treated well. The same Mark certifies that no child labour was used. Mr Yorke stated that “Sports equipment from the major brands has a bad reputation for exploitation of workers, so these balls are really good to have. When the youngsters see the Fairtrade logo on them it will make them interested to find out more about it.”
One of our members who is in the sixth form at Farlingaye said at the time “I’d like to see Woodbridge become a Fairtrade Town. The school can be a big part of that. It’s important to get young people thinking about issues like Fairtrade and choosing Fairtrade products.”
Fairtrade For Woodbridge has always felt that our local schools are important places to promote Fairtrade and help people understand the issues of trade justice, and felt this would be a great way of doing that whilst at the same time supporting our schools and the fitness of our local children and young people. Another 20 footballs were presented to Kyson County Primary School on Friday 17th March.
If you would like to have Fairtrade footballs presented to your school (providing it’s in Woodbridge) do get in touch with us. Alternatively, if you would like to contribute towards the cost of another set for another school, we would of course be very pleased to hear from you, as our funds are extremely limited! Please email us or ring 01394 382589.
Fairtrade Fortnight 2006
Every year the Fairtrade Foundation declares a national Fairtrade Fortnight – an opportunity to raise awareness of Fairtrade and encourage people to think more about how their shopping habits affect other people. Promotion is done by special events, advertising, tv and radio programmes and more. Many shops also choose to promote Fairtrade at this time by holding special offers on the products they sell which carry the FAIRTRADE Mark.
Last year Fairtrade For Woodbridge set up and manned stalls in both Budgens and The Co-op in the Thoroughfare throughout the two weeks, giving out information and free samples of some Fairtrade products, as well as pointing people to shops and Cafés in Woodbridge which sell them. Unfortunately we were unable to organise the same this year due to our members being either ill or occupied by other concerns.
We have, however, still been active in the town. Below you can read about us giving away Fairtrade footballs to some of our local schools. We have also been encouraging businesses around town to promote Fairtrade, and are pleased to say that Notcutts, Jars of Clay, The Good Food Shop, Rainbow Apothecary and the Town Council are promoting Fairtrade Fortnight by giving away copies of our new Fairtrade Town Directory.
If you would like to receive a copy of our first Fairtrade Town Directory, complied by ourselves, please email info@fairtradeforwoodbridge.org.uk or ring 01394 382589.
Café Olé – Saturday 7th May 2005
Saturday 7th May saw another Fairtrade Coffee morning in St John’s Church, Woodbridge. These are held twice a year: one in May called Café Olé, and another before Christmas called Café Noel. The purpose of these events is to give people a chance to come together and enjoy a relaxed café style atmosphere, whilst at the same time learning more about Fairtrade and seeing what sort of things are now available. As well as being able to enjoy home made cakes and a choice of Fairtrade tea or coffee, people were able to browse the stalls around the church and buy anything that tickled their fancy. There were stalls selling beautiful hand carved animals and other artwork, Traidcraft products including a variety of foodstuffs, drinks, snacks and cards, and Tearcraft handcrafted gifts, jewellery and artwork. Cardcraft was also there, selling Christian books, music, and a selection of fairly traded cards and stationary. Children were also catered for, with a créche area for the little ones, and face painting and hair braiding on offer from Revival, the youth congregation of St John’s Church, who are raising funds for a mission trip to Romania this August. We held our own stall as well, offering people 
information about Fairtrade and our campaign to make Woodbridge an official Fairtrade Town, as well as projecting an informative slideshow throughout.
The morning went very well, and a large number of people came along. As always though, there was plenty of cake left over, which went on sale at the end for people to take away! The next similar event at St John’s will be in late November or early December. We will advertise it on here as usual, and play a strong part in it.