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Education, Fair Trade Fortnight, Shop

Fair Trade Fortnight Tastings

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Volunteers, Steph Mayo (left) and Clotilde Rayon (right), with education officer, Linda Okhuoya-Ologe (centre)

To celebrate Fair Trade Fortnight, Rainbow Turtle is hosting a series of tastings of fair trade goodies and home baking outside its Paisley shop in Gauze Street. If you come down to the shop between 10am and 2pm on Saturday 26th February, Friday 4th or Saturday 5th March you’ll be able to meet some of our wonderful volunteers and taste the delights of some of the products we sell in the shop. The home baking includes ingredients made with fair trade sugar, chocolate, olive oil and even beer bread mix! Also, on offer is fair trade coffee and hot chocolate.

The tasting is free but we also hope that you’ll like the products or ingredients so much that you’ll want to buy some for yourself inside the shop. Failing that, come and chat to our volunteers and staff at the stall, they’d love to meet you. Also, you’ll be taking part in one of our events to mark Fair Trade Fortnight where we remember the producers in developing countries and everyone that makes fair trade possible.

Our thanks go to all the staff and volunteers who prepared the stall, cooked the home baking, looked after the stall and encouraged passers by to try the food.

Education, Uncategorised

Competition time!

Linda Okhuoya-Ologe

It’s this time of the year again and Fairtrade Fortnight – the UK’s biggest celebration of all things fair trade, is around the corner. This year the festivities will start on the 21st of February and come to an end on the 6th of March. During these 2 weeks, there will be plenty of opportunities for all people – big or small, to take part in different activities. Across the country, there are online workshops, seminars, cook-alongs, exhibitions and many more.

Here at Rainbow Turtle, we want to start the celebrations by organising a “Design a Fairtrade t-shirt” competition for young people. This year’s Fairtrade Fortnight theme is CHOOSE THE WORLD YOU WANT and we feel that giving young people a voice in the discussion about the world future is fundamental.

So we invite every young person in Renfrewshire and beyond to share their creativity with us. Don’t be shy! Creativity, striking ideas and understanding of the topic are just as important as artistic skills.

WE CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOUR DESIGNS!

The selected artworks will be displayed in the Rainbow Turtle shop and submitted for the national Fairtrade Fortnight competition organised by Fairtrade Foundation.

You can download the t-shirt template below or pick one up from the Rainbow Turtle shop.

THE DESIGNS HAVE TO BE SUBMITTED BY 4 PM ON THE 26TH FEBRUARY 2022 VIA EMAIL (education@rainbowturtle.org.uk) OR TO THE RAINBOW TURTLE SHOP.

FF22-Tshirt-competition-templateDownload
Education, Podcasts

Throwback to original podcast episode 1 part 1 from 2016

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Original podcast creator, Josh Brown

This episode takes us back to February 2016 to the very first Rainbow Turtle podcast which was previously thought to be lost. Part 1 of this episode takes us on a fair trade journey:

  • It starts with founder, Liz Cotton, talking to school pupils.
  • It then chats to attendees at the Scottish Fair Trade Forum AGM,
  • Before Ross Beattie looks at fair trade in Uzbekistan and Lynsay Bellshaw talks about her average day at Rainbow Turtle. 
  • The episode finishes with an interview with rice farmer, Howard Msukwa, from Malawi.

Please subscribe to our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google podcasts. If you like us give us a 5 star rating or leave us a comment.

Education, Shop

Jenipher Sambazi video

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Following on from Jenipher Sambazi’s talk at our COP26 event, and our recent news item about Jenipher’s Coffee being stocked by Rainbow Turtle, we thought you’d like to hear more about her and the amazing work that she does in Uganda. Jenipher is an inspiring person who talks about how fair trade has changed the perception of women in Uganda. She also shares what she is doing on her coffee farm to combat the effects of climate change. Click on the video below, sit back with your cup of Jenipher’s Coffee, and relax…

Please note that Rainbow Turtle will be reopening for business on Saturday 8th Jan at 10am. You can not only buy her delicious coffee but you can peruse our extensive stock of fair trade drinks, food, crafts and gift cards.

Shop

Jenipher’s Coffee on sale at Rainbow Turtle

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Jenipher’s Coffee

We recently met Jenipher Wettaka at Rainbow Turtle’s COP26 event. She spoke about the coffee that she grows on the slopes of Mt Elgon in eastern Uganda. We’re delighted to say that we’re the only retailer of her delicious coffee in Scotland. Come and buy her coffee in our Paisley Shop for your own kitchen or make it a very different gift for that coffee lover in your life.

You can find out more about Jenipher in this short video clip that played in her talk to us in Paisley back in November. Look out also for our next podcast episode where we replay the whole of that talk.

Education, Podcasts

Pauline Tiffen interview

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Welcome to this special Christmas episode of the Rainbow Turtle Rebooted podcast where I’m delighted to be able to interview Pauline Tiffen of the Journal of Fair Trade. Ever since I started this series I have been trying to get Pauline onto it. I first heard her speak at a Scottish Fair Trade Forum lecture back in the summer of 2020, at the height of lock down, when she spoke about the future of fair trade. It struck me then that her thinking about fair trade was on a different level to mine. 

She’s been involved in fair trade, or earlier versions of it, since the mid 1980s. She helped set up Cafe Direct and Divine Chocolate. Pauline was head hunted by the World Bank to look at ethical financing. And she currently edits the Journal of Fair Trade and is involved in the setting up of a business to business project, which links cooperative coffee farmers in landlocked Uganda and Rwanda with small coffee roasters and coffee shops around the UK.

We had a fascinating chat where she talked about her early bohemian childhood following her travelling actor father, to her studying russian in the old Soviet Union and then moving to Poland when Lech Walesa started the Solidarity revolution. I’ve decided to keep this longer podcast together in one episode just to maintain the fluidity of her interesting story. I do hope that you can find the time to listen to it and enjoy her story like I have done.

My thanks to Pauline for sharing her thoughts on fair trade and on her interesting life experiences. It was a real pleasure to interview her and I hope that you have enjoyed this episode as much as I have done. Listen out for more of our episodes, particularly for a series of talks we recorded during COP26.

Please subscribe to our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google podcasts. If you like us give us a 5 star rating or leave us a comment.

Uncategorised

Window display

Linda Okhuoya-Ologe

Have you seen our spectacular COP26 window display celebrating cooperation and close connections between consumers and producers and between all of the people around us? We hope so, as time doesn’t slow down and we had to say farewell to our COP display to welcome another wonderful artwork created by very talented Nicola Henry. Nicola is a Glasgow based illustrator, who was kind enough to let us into her world right in the time for Christmas. Come down to the shop to see us and admire Nicolas’s work in full. Besides the wonderful window display, we also have a lot of new stock and we (probably) have everything you need to finish off your Christmas shopping or simply treat yourself during this cold weather.

We have a range of nativity scenes – felt from Nepal, wood and olive wood from Bethlehem (doesn’t get more authentic than this!). On top of that, we have a big range of Christmas tree decorations and of course – TONS OF CHOCOLATE – white, milk, dark, vegan, big bars, mini bars, hearts, coins, elves, angles…you name it!

For those of you looking for more practical gifts, we have a fresh delivery of items made from inner tubes, coffee sacks and lorry curtain fabric: washbags, wallets, sports boot bags, ‘gig’ bags and decorations. For smaller humans we have some new Christmas themed items from Lanka Kade – perfect for Christmas stockings (which you can also get in our shop – Christmas sorted!).

If this doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will. Our fantastic volunteers know answers to all your questions about the origins of items stocked in the shop. They are also great if you just want to pop by for a little chat. I’m going to risk saying that we have the best volunteers in town! 😀

So get your warm coat, hat and mittens (if you can’t find them, it’s ok, we have some in the shop!) and pop down to see us!

To see more of Nicola Henry’s work please head to her website: https://www.nicolajanehenry.com/ or find her on Instagram at https://instagram.com/nicolajanehenry

Education, Podcasts

Martin Rhodes talk on COP26 and Fair Trade Part 2

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This is the 2nd part of Martin Rhode’s talk that he gave to Rainbow Turtle at their AGM back in October. In part one he talked about the links between COP26 and Fair Trade. In this episode he answers questions from the audience and goes into some of the areas more deeply. Some of the questions he dealt with were:

  • How did we prevent the global south paying for the cost of the climate emergency, 
  • What was happening to tariffs that was preventing producers from exporting finished products rather than raw materials, 
  • And, what was the Scottish Fair Trade Forum doing after COP26?

So pour yourself a cup of tea, sit back and relax…

Please subscribe to our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google podcasts. If you like us, please give us a 5 star rating or leave us a comment.

Education, Shop

Global Hands Working Together

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Rainbow Turtle’s Smithhills Street window for COP26

As part of Paisley’s Windows on Cop 26 Illuminated window art trail, Rainbow Turtle was fortunate to have its Smithhills Street window beautifully decorated by artists, Rebecca Johnstone and Tzaritsa Asante. Working on a theme of Global Hands Working Together it reflects the different hands that need to work together to save our environment.

Paisley First and Renfrewshire Leisure teamed up together to create an art trail through Paisley that includes the Rainbow Turtle shop wind. They wanted to link the COP26 discussions happening in Glasgow with the climate issues that were important to the Paisley business owners. For more information on the art trail click here.

Rebecca Johnstone (aka Dainty Dora) is a writer, artist and designer creating bold and colourful hand-drawn pattern designs and illustrations – such as the iconic Paisley Pattern – to create her unique ‘Pattern Bomb Prints’, design calendars and stand-alone illustrations. More about her work can be found here.

Tzaritsa Asante is a sustainable fashion designer from Scotland/Ghana. More about her work can be found here. Tzaritsa will also be speaking at Rainbow Turtle’s COP26 event, “Climate change & fair trade: Behind the scenes” on Friday 12th November at 6pm in the Life Church in Paisley. More information on our event can be found here.

Education, Podcasts

Mauro Pereira interview

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Welcome to our 7th edition of Rainbow Turtle Rebooted podcast. In this episode we talk to Mauro Pereira from Brazil. He is the executive director of Defenders of the Planet, an environmental campaign group based in Rio de Janiero. He is attending the COP26 summit as the focal point for Latin America for the sustainable development goals.

Mauro talks passionately about our environment, especially at what has been lost or destroyed in his home country, he talks about his early influences and what led him to campaign for the environment.

This episode was recorded ahead of the start of COP26 and we were fortunate to hear from Mauro before he spoke to the conference on Thursday 4th November.