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Recycling for Good Causes

colourful knitted peruvian cardigans

As you may know, Rainbow Turtle is a charity but our shop isn’t a traditional charity shop. Everything we sell is new, and has been produced or grown by people who are paid fairly for their work, and are often the people most in need in the world.

This means that everything you buy at Rainbow Turtle – from tea and coffee to jewellery and toys – helps people all over the world.

charity recycling box

But did you know our charity can still benefit from donations of your unwanted items? Instead of selling them on, we collect your old phones, laptops, jewellery (even costume or broken jewellery), foreign or UK currency (including out of circulation coins and notes), gadgets like sat navs and MP3 players, and used stamps, and send them off to Recycling for Good Causes. In return, we get a cheque for Rainbow Turtle!

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Fairtrade Fortnight 2019

This year’s Fairtrade Fortnight (February 25th to March 10th) was themed around cocoa production and also looked at the empowerment of female farmers – about a third of the producers of Divine Chocolate are women, so they deserve a say!

10 children pose in football grounds, two holding a fair trade ball each and sitting on top of a giant ballTo celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight, Rainbow Turtle organised two schools conferences. For local primary school pupils, we arranged a visit to St Mirren Park, to hear from Bala Sport (who produce Fairtrade footballs), WOSDEC, St Mirren Women’s Football Club, and from Rainbow Turtle. It was a great day, with lots of learning about the work that goes into making a football, the benefits of Fairtrade for football workers, and also the parallel difficulties of being a female farmer/producer and a woman in sport. And the amazing news to come out of the event is that St Mirren WFC are now using Fairtrade footballs for their matches!

a pupil asks a fair trade coffee farmer a questionFor secondary school pupils, Rainbow Turtle, in conjunction with the Scottish Fair Trade Forum, organised for Aimable Nshimiye, a coffee producer from Rwanda, to visit Mary Russell School and speak about his business and how becoming Fairtrade certified has helped them to grow. The Mary Russell pupils had thought up some interesting questions for Aimable in advance! Rainbow Turtle are very grateful to the Renfrewshire Fair Trade Steering Group for their support in organising this event, as well as the one at St Mirren Park.

fair trade cakesOther activities which took place during Fairtrade Fortnight 2019 included a Fairtrade Bake Off at Gryffe High School, which we were lucky enough to be asked to help judge – look at those amazing cakes! The winner (which we don’t have a picture off because it was scoffed too quickly!) was judged to be best because of its delicious taste, its perfect appearance, and most importantly its high quantity of Fairtrade ingredients!

It was fantastic fortnight, and so encouraging to see the real engagement with Fairtrade Fortnight and the ideas of Fair Trade that so many local schools and organisations have!

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Fairtrade Fortnight Schools’ Poster Competition

As you probably know, Fairtrade Fortnight 2019 is upon us, and to raise its profile Rainbow Turtle is inviting school pupils to enter a poster competition. This year Fairtrade Fortnight is focussed on cocoa farmers, many of whom are women.  The theme is “She deserves a living income”.  Most cocoa farmers do not earn enough to feed and clothe their family, yet in the UK, chocolate is worth £4billion a year.

Can you make a poster?

To link in with the theme “She deserves  a living income”

Or

To show how chocolate can change the world.

Schools are asked to select their top 3 entries and send them with name and age to:

Rainbow Turtle, 7 Gauze Street, Paisley PA1 1EP

Email: education@rainbowturtle.org.uk
Tel: 0141 887 1881

The Education Group will select the final top 3 who will win a voucher for Rainbow Turtle to the value of £15, £10 and £5.

The winning posters will be displayed in the shop window.
Closing date: Friday 29th March 2019

Please indicate if you would like your posters returned to you afterwards.

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Gifts That Give

This Christmas we’re thinking about gifts that give in more ways than one. We all want our loved ones to appreciate the presents we give them this festive season, and of course at Rainbow Turtle our real focus is on how our purchases help those who produce them, but we are also concerned with protecting the world that we live in.

Gifts That Give - to the environment - to the producers - to your loved ones

The fair trade movement has for many years been interested in the welfare of our planet. One of the World Fair Trade Organization’s ten principles is ‘Respect for the Environment’ and they encourage their member producers to use sustainably managed raw materials and, where possible, to use renewable energy sources and to ship their goods by sea. The Fairtrade Foundation also has this focus, and provides their producers with guidance on how to lessen their environmental impact.

That’s why this Christmas we’ve designed our window display to reflect all the many ways you can incorporate ethically produced goods into your celebrations. From wreaths made out of recycled saris to angels for the tree that were once glass alcohol bottles to more practical items like eco-friendly firelighters and sustainable bamboo travel mugs – Rainbow Turtle is the place to shop this Christmas. Support us, the producers, and the environment by buying gifts that give.

You can also support Rainbow Turtle this Christmas by voting for us in Paisley First’s Best Dressed Christmas Window competition – although they seem to have forgotten to capture our special Christmas window! We’ve put a lot of effort into our ethical and sustainable festive display so we would really love if you could vote for it even though it isn’t shown on the Paisley First website.

Merry Christmas!

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Christmas Shopping at Rainbow Turtle

Are you looking for that extra special present for someone you love? Do you wonder where can you get something different for the person who has everything? Come to our delightful Rainbow Turtle shop in Gauze Street in Paisley and browse our wonderful selection of gifts, food and cards. From our cabinet full of unique pieces of handcrafted jewellery, our fairly traded clothing, the delightful collection of bags and scarves, our beautifully crafted ceramics and glassware, our scented body cremes and soaps, to our selection of Christmas cards and fairly traded foods you will find something for everyone. Better still come in and sample our genuine Christmas atmosphere. Meet our wonderful volunteers who give up of their generous time and talk to them about why they think fair trade is for life and not just for Christmas.

You say you can’t make it to the shop during our opening hours of 10am to 4pm, Tuesday to Saturday? Come to one of our shopping evenings, or organise one yourself. Better still, come to Renfrewshire House on Friday 14th December between 10am and 2pm and visit our stall in the Atrium.

If you would like to find out more about our wonderful shop or about the events we will be running, please contact us.

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Volunteers’ Evening 28/9/18

12 Rainbow Turtle volunteers sit around a table

Volunteers, Roisin and Duncan, hosted our first Rainbow Turtle Volunteers’ evening on the 29th September. It started with a delicious meal where everyone brought a dish to share with the group. The meal was a great opportunity to meet new volunteers and get to know others whom I had only met when I was in the shop. What was evident was the number of friendships that had developed between the volunteers during the time that they had worked in our delightful shop.

The second half of the evening was taken up with a discussion about ways that Rainbow Turtle can support the volunteers, how to recruit new ones and how we can boost sales in the shop.

If you’re interested becoming a volunteer for Rainbow Turtle and joining this wonderful group of people, please visit our volunteer page.

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How to subscribe to Rainbow Turtle blogs

  1. Navigate to our home page.
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Rainbow Turtle AGM 2018

Please come along to Rainbow Turtle’s Annual General Meeting on Thursday 11th October in the Methodist Central Hall, Paisley, at 7pm.

Following the business part of the meeting our new shop manager, Gemma Elliott, will be speaking about where she sees the Rainbow Turtle shop going in the future. As always we’ll have our selection of fair trade tea and coffee to warm you up.

If you’d like to attend our meeting please go to our Contact Us page and drop us a wee email.

We look forward to seeing you there.