Micklefield Library, Micklefield Road
Those present:
Jack Badu Bob Smith
Mike King Sheila Stevenson
Matt Knight Tony Thornby
Sarah Moroz
JB – he is Vice President of Education and Welfare and Chair of the Fairtrade steering group at Bucks New Uni. Feels that this is a good opportunity to work with the town.
TT – his contact with Jack came about through working with a charity called Africa Turns Green. He is trying to get the Uni to take on this charity as part of their Enterprise event.
JB – may also be able to get this charity to be one of those which benefits from Rag Week.
MK – tonight’s meeting will be mainly focussing on the upcoming Town Committee meeting on June 25th. If Jack is free, he would be very welcome to speak as part of our presentation.
SM – talked about the visit to Witney and how Witney got their case through their council.
MK – Witney may have problems now because one of their main business links was a local brewery and they used fairtrade sugar but this is no longer the case.
TT – talked about his work on updating our website and other contacts that he is hoping to make eg. the chair of the Clare Foundation and Steve Redgrave and Exposure at the air park. He will try to get them to agree to be on our website as supporters.
SMS’s banana picture was discussed
MK – we will take it along to the Town Committee meeting. Also quoted from the e-mail response he had received from the Peros manager.
SM – we should quote this at the Committee meeting.
MK – at the meeting he will give an overview of how far we have got and that we meet or exceed all the other criteria except council support.
MKn – on the agenda, he is down to do an introduction. Thinks the steering group should contact all the Town Councillors before next week. Tony Green will definitely not support it and probably neither will a couple of the others. Doesn’t know whether it will be a free vote but confident that we will get a majority. Any decisions made by Town Cttee are then referred to the Cabinet who can then overturn it but Richard Scott has made a point of saying that he wants the Town Cttee to have more power. We have been given a 15 minute slot and then 5 minutes for questions (but he has requested more time for questions). Thinks we should decide on the motion beforehand and send it out to the Town Councillors. Wycombe District Council has something called a Memorandum of Understanding with St Vincent which is due to be renewed just before the Town Cttee meeting. Rashid knows the person who writes the speeches for the High Commissioner for St Vincent who will be there to sign the Memorandum and Matt asked him to mention his hopes for Wycombe to become a Fairtrade Town.
It was decided that we should put together a sheet of information beforehand, including the motion. We could include the 5 criteria in this.
TT – we could also put our website details on the briefing sheet.
MKn – we could send an immediate e-mail pointing councillors to our website, then a follow-up e-mail giving the motion (once it has got passed by Democratic Services) and an overview of the 5 criteria and what we have done so far.
TT – thinks we have more work to do on the other criteria before we apply to the Fairtrade Foundation for FT Town status.
JB – the Uni have had their Fairtrade status renewed over the summer.
Mk – there will be another event at the Environment Centre in July that Sheena has had an e-mail from Ivan about.
Next meeting: 9th July?