Latest News from Fairtrade Hay

The Fairtrade Foundation have renewed Hay's status as a Fairtrade Town. Quite a bit of work has to go into providing the evidence for this, so the Fairtrade Hay group are rightly delighted.
The Fairtrade Foundation commented: "Your group has demonstrated dedication to ensure Fairtrade becomes part of daily life in Hay-on-Wye. You have managed to engage successfully with a great number of people and with a variety of local organisations."
We're coming to the end of Fairtrade Fortnight now, and the Fairtrade Hay group are speaking twice to the pupils of Hay School, and showing a short film about cocoa farming in West Africa, as well as a display in the school lobby. The theme this year is the campaign to secure a fair wage for farmers, especially women farmers.
Hay Deli is promoting the Fairtrade Palestinian company Zaytoun in its shop window, with a Saturday tasting session. Zaytoun's range includes olive oil, herb mixes, grains, almonds and dates.
The Fairtrade Hay group are also going to do a survey shortly of shops and businesses in Hay to assess how much Fairtrade produce is offered, and to see where they can encourage an increase. I was involved in the very first such survey - it'll be interesting to compare the two.
Fairtrade Hay meets on the first Monday of every month at 6.30pm in the Blue Boar - new members always welcome!

New Fairtrade Shop in Town

Welcome to Rosa Azul, which has opened on Castle Street, just in time for the Festival.

Eighteen Rabbit Celebrates

Drinks will be available from 5pm to 7pm on Saturday evening, to celebrate the opening of the new shop.

Browsing the Web

While browsing through some blogs today, I came across Kindred of the Quiet Way. In her post on 23rd January, she writes a very good piece about the Cambodian ear-rings she bought from Eighteen Rabbit (online, but their shop is up at the Castle).
This reminded me that I hadn't added them to the side bar of this blog yet, so that oversight has now been rectified, and their online shop is available to be looked at.

Eighteen Rabbits

The "Purveyor of Finest Junk" has moved out of the premises at Hay Castle, and the space has just been taken over by Hay's newest pop-up shop. Eighteen Rabbit sells Fairtrade gifts from all over the world. When I went up there earlier today I saw pottery and sparkly mirrors from Mexico, gourd lamps from Thailand, knitted hats and wrist warmers and scarves from Nepal, and all sorts of other interesting things, at quite reasonable prices. The shop is run by Louise Davies and Andrew Williams, who already run a sustainable event management agency called Seventeen Events, and it will be open until the end of December. They also trade online, at www.eighteenrabbit.co.uk (and even their free bookmarks are printed on recycled paper). They are also on Twitter, which is probably the easiest way to find the website. When I went looking for it (it's still very new) I found it under www.eighteen-rabbit.myshopify.com So, why Eighteen Rabbit? When they were in Honduras, they came across monuments in honour of a Mayan king with that name, and he was associated with arts and creativity.