The Isle of Man Fairtrade Group are celebrating after receiving awards at a reception held last night (15th October) to mark 20 years of Fairtrade in the UK.
The Outstanding Fairtrade Campaign award was presented to the Isle of Man Fairtrade Group, for their work to raise the profile of Fairtrade and influence the behaviour of local consumers and businesses.
An independent judging panel of campaigning and fair trade experts chose the Isle of Man group after reviewing entries from grassroots campaigner groups across England, Scotland and Wales. Ben Jackson, Chief Executive of BOND, the membership body for international development organisations in the UK, was one of the judges and praised the group for demonstrating, “imagination, inclusion, inspiration and impact… in a way that typified exactly the kind of solid, cross-community campaigning which has taken place all across the UK to help get Fairtrade to where it is today after 20 years.”
On receiving the award from chef, writer and broadcaster Allegra McEvedy MBE, who is Patron of the Fairtrade Foundation, Rosemary Clarke from the Isle of Man Fairtrade Group said: "We’re so pleased that our work organising a Fairtrade conference for primary school children won this award. It involved so many parts of the community, including government, commerce, education and the third sector. We’re really looking forward to holding our next Fairtrade conference in January.”
Infrastucture Minister Phil Gawne, added: “The Isle of Man is very proud of its Fairtrade Island status and delighted to receive this award.”
There are more than 10,000 local Fairtrade campaigning groups in the UK, including Fairtrade Towns, Fairtrade Schools, Fairtrade Universities and Fairtrade Faith Groups.
An award was also presented to Divine, the chocolate company that is 45% owned by the Ghanaian farmers who supply its cocoa. Divine’s Milk Chocolate with Toffee & Sea Salt was named as the UK’s Favourite Fairtrade Product.
Fairtrade benefits 1.4m farmers and workers in more than 70 developing countries, by ensuring they receive a fair, stable price for their produce, better working conditions, and a Fairtrade Premium that can be invested as they choose, in their business or in projects to benefit their community, such as classrooms, clinics, clean drinking water or climate adaptation programmes. In 2013, UK shoppers bought an estimated ?1.7bn of Fairtrade products, which resulted in over ?26m of Fairtrade Premiums being paid to producers.
Twenty years ago, there were just three products carrying the FAIRTRADE Mark: Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate, Cafedirect medium roast coffee, and Clipper tea. Today, the FAIRTRADE Mark is the most widely-known ethical label in the world and UK shoppers
