WYCOMBE FOR FAIRTRADE
Minutes of meeting: 26th September 2017
Avenue Methodist Church, Rutland Avenue
Those present:
Mike King Jhon Munoz
Sheena King Bob Smith
Sarah Moroz
SM – will e-mail Claire Booth to see if she would still like to receive our minutes
MK – the Volunteer Co-ordinator and FT liaison at Bucks New Uni, Rebecca Haymer, sends her apologies
SM – the ‘Population Matters’ event went well for us and SK’s talk was extremely good
MK – the text of SK’s talk was sent to the FT Foundation as part of our renewal application. We are still waiting to hear back from the FT Foundation – should be soon.
JM – has been in contact with Marco Coscione, a member of the Latin American and Caribbean network of FT small-producers and workers (CLAC). Marco used to work for the FT Advocacy office in Brussels. JM has talked to Marco about us having contact with a producer group in the developing world
SK – we could maybe also involve the Chesham group in this contact, as we are quite small. We could share stories of our experience with retailers here and use social media to communicate.
MK – is going to the national supporters’ conference on October 7th, together with JM. It is worrying re: the Sainsbury’s decision to change to their own ‘Fairly Traded’ tea. MK feels that the way to tackle it would be to support the other retailers who are sticking with FT – Waitrose, Co-op etc. It will be good to discuss this at the conference. There has been an advert on TV for Nescafe, saying that they look after the growers but without the FT certification.
BS – the buying of FT is still down to the consumer
SM – the FT Foundation hasn’t got the financial clout of the large companies to promote their goods
SK – the fight against Sainsbury’s has been taken up by WI, Oxfam etc as well
SM – longer-term aim of support for growers is to have more of the processing taking place in the country of origin
JM – there is a company based in Dublin who have developed the processing of their coffee in the country of origin ‘Proudly Made in Africa’
MK – re: the problems we have had with public liability insurance – this could be discussed at the supporters’ conference
SM – maybe we could have some future events in council-owned buildings and see if they would waive the public liability insurance
MK – re: funding in general – perhaps we should ask Bewleys to sponsor us in some way or maybe to sponsor a flower bed in the town
JM – will ask at the conference if it is possible to arrange a speaker from a producer country
SK – it would be good to have a meeting following the conference to enable MK and JM to report back
SK – we could approach Matt Knight to ask re: the possibility of holding our presentation event in a council building and ask if we would be covered for public liability insurance
MK – it would be good to get TT’s input re: improving the website and trying to get sponsors
Next meeting: Thursday 19th or 26th October TBC