In this episode we introduce you to two more volunteers with the organisation.
First up is Anne Scriven. Anne has been involved in fair trade for a long time, starting with her local church group in Kirkintilloch though to helping out in the Rainbow Turtle shop, various stalls and events.
We finish with Steph Mayo who started out as a community worker helping local women’s group who were interested in global issues. This lead to a meeting with Maureen Brough, a long term volunteer with Rainbow Turtle, helped Steph to get involved. Now Steph volunteers in the shop and is a trustee of the charity.
In this mini podcast episode we meet our education officer, Linda Okhuoya Ologe. Linda has been on maternity leave for this past year and, just before fair trade fortnight, I popped round to Linda’s house to interview her and to hold her new baby, Zoraya!
As well as talking about fair trade, Linda spoke about an interesting project that she’d been involved in to bring fair trade coffee beans from Rwanda and Uganda to Paisley. She linked a new social enterprise, The Alternative Coffee Company, that imported the green beans from the cooperatives, with a small, high quality coffee roaster in the town, called The Gatehouse Coffee Roasters. With this venture she has created a beautiful connection between Paisley and farmers in Uganda and Rwanda.
In episode 6 of our current series we meet 3 more volunteers from Rainbow Turtle.
First up is Kitty McEachen, an escapee from Glasgow who, to her surprise, found that Paisley wasn’t such a bad place to live in, especially when she came upon Rainbow Turtle and some of the committed volunteers, including the inspiring founder, Liz Cotton.
Next we have Duncan Macintosh, a long term supporter of fair trade, and early stall holder, who became a volunteer in the shop when he retired in 2009.
Finally we meet Marianne Sermanni, volunteer and trustee of the charity who, though her friendship with Roisin Mulholland (we spoke to Roisin in episode 2), started working in the shop in 2017.
In episode 5 of series 3 of our podcast we meet Elise Kelly, our creative shop manager. Elise has been in charge for about three and a half years. She joined us when we were just coming out of covid when things were tight and sales were poor. During that time Elise has transformed Rainbow Turtle shop into a bright and colourful place to come and buy fair trade products.
After Elise we have Jonathan Barr, one of our younger volunteers, who was unemployed when he first joined and now has developed a broad set of retail skills.
Finally, we have Sarah Hurst, our newest volunteer, who combines her background in sales with her developing aptitude in social media to help promote the shop on Facebook and Instagram.
In this edition of our podcast, Rainbow Turtle Rebooted, we introduce you to Joyce Jackson who started out as a fair trade stall holder in her local church before being inveigled into volunteering at the shop by Liz Cotton when she retired 7 or 8 years ago.
Following Joyce we have Clotilde Raydon, who 6 years ago came into the shop to get some refills for cleaning products. After a couple of visits, Liz Cotton, the then manager and director of the shop, invited Clotilde to become a volunteer.
Finally, we hear from Chris Johnstone, volunteer, director of the shop and chair of the charity trustees. He started out in fair trade when his GP’s practice became the first fair trade practice in Scotland.
In this episode we meet Juliet Robb of Olive Tree, a charity that buys products from crafts people in Palestine and then sells them in Scotland. The money provides the artisans with a living and any profits made from the sales goes to support charities in Palestine.
Juliet first thought about working with people from Palestine after a trip to the Holy Land. At the end of the trip, the minister said to her, “so what are you now going to do!” She now has a successful organisation that sells quality, jewellery, embroidery and ceramics that involves about 20 volunteers, all run out of her house!
I hope that, like me, you’ll be inspired by this courageous woman.
In this mini podcast episode, we meet long standing Rainbow Turtle volunteers: Gillian Henry, Roisin Mulholland and Maureen Brough. In it they share why fair trade is important to them and what are their favourite products that they can buy in the shop. Unsurprisingly, chocolate and coffee feature high on their lists!
Michael Gidney, currently the chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation, has worked for at least 30 years in international development (which corresponds nicely with the 30th anniversary of FT movement in UK). He started out as a teacher in Kenya and then for their children’s services in an orphanage, has worked with Voluntary Services Overseas and with Amnesty International. He joined Traidcraft in 19991 and became Director of Policy, then moved to the Fairtrade Foundation in 2009 as deputy executive director and has been chief executive since 2012. He is also a trustee of Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
This was a most interesting interview where we discussed the dangers of commoditisation of products and the importance of fair trade to producers and farmers.
We’re delighted to announced that series 3 of our podcast, Rainbow Turtle Rebooted, is planned to be released during fair trade fortnight 2024 with episode 1 out on Monday 9th September. So if you’d like to listen to it, please subscribe to it in your relevant app. In the meantime, here is a taster…
In this episode I am delighted to be talking with Rachel Farey of the One World Shop in Edinburgh. It’s a beautiful shop positioned at the western end of Princes Street in Edinburgh with the historic castle as a backdrop.
Rachel has had an interesting journey that started with working with L’Arche after she left school. L’arche is an international federation of Non-profit organisations working to create networks of community where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together. From there she studied theology at Kent University where a friendship took her to Edinburgh and she started volunteering for the fledgling One World Shop. After a few years volunteering and then working for the organisation, she retrained as a religious education teacher and taught for a few years, before finally returning to the shop as manager.
Rachel was involved setting up the British Association of Fair Trade Shops, was chair of the Edinburgh fair trade group, helped set up the Scottish Fair Trade Forum and was part of the team that helped Scotland become recognised as a fair trade nation.
In addition, Rachel has travelled extensively in the Indian subcontinent meeting producers and understanding the difference that fair trade makes to their lives.
Whilst I was chatting with Rachel I was struck by her knowledge of fair trade, the people involved, and the place that Scotland has played in helping producers and farmers across the world. We are fortunate to have people like her on our side!
