Wales has recently become the world’s first Fair Trade Nation after considerable progress made by the Wales Fair Trade Forum over the last two years. In order to celebrate this a flag was presented at the Fair Trade Conference in Newport on the 7th June and this flag will visit every county in Wales and return to Cardiff for St Davids Day (1st March) 2009.
I must admit that this fact has been kept very quiet. Having lived in Wales for 10 years and being interested in Fair Trade, it was only when I decided to write about what was happening with Fair Trade in Wales that I realised this. There has been a great deal about Fair Trade in the press over the years and I would reckon that every Welsh person has a reasonable understanding of the subject. I have just asked my 8 year old daughter what it means and she said that someone came into school and explained it to them. However, when I recently spoke to my sister in Australia, she really didn’t know what it was about, and what she did know was what she had picked up on a recent visit over here. Obviously Fair Trade is much more in the awareness of the Welsh folk than it is in other countries.
Wales is a very rural country with a population of about 3 million. It has five cities, Bangor, Cardiff, Newport, St David’s and Swansea and many small towns, the smallest being Llanwrtyd Wells which has a population of about 600. Wales now has 58 fairtrade town groups, including fairtrade groups in all of the 22 counties of Wales and 380 schools are learning about fairtrade and using fairtrade products.
Scotland and Lichtenstein have now accepted the challenge to also become Fair Trade Nations. Both of these are also small countries, Scotland has a population of just over 5 million and Lichtenstein has about 35,000.
Sat, Jul 26, 2008
Fair Trade