Sunday 29 September 2013

A Party for Timbuktu

The Fairtrade group were busy yesterday at Hay Castle, where a party was held to welcome visitors from our twin town of Timbuktu. They were serving teas and cakes to a packed hall.
Timbuktu has been through a very difficult time recently, with rebels taking the town and imposing strict Islamic law there, but things seem to be getting better now, with the delegation of teachers and midwives now able to travel to visit Wales.

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Fair Trade Celebration Weekend in Brecon

Love Zimbabwe has been one of the stalls at the Hay Christmas Fairtrade Fairs - and some of the others the group has held throughout the years.
On Friday, Martha Musonza of Love Zimbabwe will be heard on Radio 2, talking to Jeremy Vine. Martha and her husband David have also been talking to Roy Noble for his Sunday breakfast show on BBC Radio Wales. This is all in the run up to the Wales Fair Trade Fair weekend which they are organising in Brecon on Saturday 4th October. It's the seventh event they've organised together - and that's only a small part of what they do to promote Fairtrade and to help the people of Zimbabwe. They've been to Seattle to give talks, and had a stall at Glastonbury, and will even be talking to members of the House of Lords in November, before they go back to Zimbabwe with solar panels and irrigation equipment for a community centre funded by the Welsh Assembly!
In Brecon, Martha is promising African dancing, live music and drumming, sheep racing and a children's African village, as well as around 30 stalls selling Fairtrade goods.

Meanwhile in Hay, the Fairtrade Group are starting to think about the Christmas Fair in the Buttermarket, and possibly a talk about Shared Interest. There is a lady in Brecon who is on the Shared Interest Council, and as the group invests money from events that it puts on in Shared Interest, it might be a good idea to publicise how that works and how the money is spent.