Congratulations to the winners of the Scottish Fair Trade Awards 2022
Outstanding Achievement Award sponsored by Scotmid Co-op
Our first award is the Outstanding Achievement Award.
Our winner’s longstanding passion, drive, support and promotion of Fair Trade in her 9 years as a board member, and 3 years as Chair of JTS would be more than enough to qualify her for this category of the Awards. She has done and continues to do so much more though. She is one of the truly remarkable key players in Fair Trade in Scotland. She has given keynote speeches at many events of varying size and has probably never turned anyone down when it comes to a request to help promote Fair Trade. One of her significant achievements was securing Fair Trade event status for the Open Golf Championship at St Andrews this year. She is Chair of the town’s Fair Trade Group and plays an important role in Fair Trade promotion through her church.
Our winner is also a board member of the Balmore Trust and has been involved in trade justice and development opportunities for women for over twenty years. An example being her encouragement and support of Grace’s Briquette Project in Malawi, an exciting initiative to turn waste rice husks into cooking fuel for farming families. It’s hard to imagine how she has time to do anything else.
Congratulations to this year’s winner of the Outstanding Achievement Award – Mary Popple.
Fair Trade Community Award
We have two winners this year.
Our first winner is Lesley Henderson of Balerno Fairtrade Village Group.
Lesley is the undoubted driving force of current Fair Trade activities in Balerno. Her infectious energy, passion and enthusiasm continue to inspire and drive Fair Trade in the village. From gathering the wealth of evidence required in securing Balerno’s award as a Fairtrade Village to engaging local politicians, businesses and organisations, and organising the Balerno Fair Trade events.
Congratulations to Lesley Henderson.
Our second winner is Andy Tomison of Perth & Kinross Fairtrade Group.
Andy is an exceptional campaigner for Fair Trade in Perth & Kinross and is a member of Perth & Kinross’s Fair Trade Group. He is a retired teacher and has played a very great part in a school partnership between The Community School of Auchterarder and Linthipe Secondary School in Malawi. Andy has offered visits to each school in Perth and Kinross to promote the JTS 90kg Rice Challenge; and has even managed to fit Fair Trade into school cycling initiatives.
Congratulations to Andy Tomison.
Fair Trade Business Award sponsored by Anderson Strathern
We have two winners this year.
Our first winner is a Fair Trade shop that has recently celebrated 20 years in business.
Based in Paisley, it offers a high street retail shop for customers from Paisley, Renfrewshire and the surrounding area. It has also been a centre and catalyst of Fair Trade campaigning in its local communities.
Congratulations to our winner – Rainbow Turtle.
Our next winner is described as a fantastic Malawian company.
They provide employment to vulnerable women and girl refugees from Dzaleka Refugee Camp, including those who have suffered gender-based violence, have disabilities or are single mothers.
This company gives back to their local community by donating 10% of their annual profit to provide educational scholarships for people in and around the refugee camp. In addition, they repurpose materials to make their products and encourage customers to recycle plus they run their company on solar power, ensuring their business has no negative impact on the environment.
The winner is Kibébé whose products are fairly traded and sustainable and are sold in Edinburgh’s One World Shop, online by a Scottish founded charity, Kenyawi Kids, and on Kibébé’s own website.
Well done Kibébé.
Innovation Award sponsored by Sisaltech
The winners have worked with the Social Enterprise Academy, they are a Fair Achieving School; and they are a Silver Rights Respecting School.
Fair Trade is fundamentally intertwined with the culture, education and community around the school. The winner is Banchory-Devenick School.
This school set up its own social enterprise tuckshop called Fabulous Fairtrade Feasts. It’s a non-profit making cooperative rather than a hierarchical organisation. To promote their work the children wrote a business plan, produced a company name, logo and slogan, wrote letters & emails, made an advert on iMovie, made posters and researched prices of stock.
Scotmid supported the school to get started and is pleased to continue to support them.
A self-sustaining, Fair Trade not-for-profit social enterprise with all the tech and promotion skills – that’s innovative.
Congratulations to Banchory-Devenick School.
Fair Trade Education Award
The winners this year are the S3 interdisciplinary learning pupils, along with their teacher Jayne Davidson from Bucksburn Academy in Aberdeen who are experts in the 90kg Rice Challenge.
The 90kg Rice Challenge has been a fantastic opportunity for the pupils to learn about the challenges facing farmers in lower income countries. The pupils had just finished studying “The Boy who harnessed the wind” as part of a focus on simple solutions to support lower income countries, so the 90kg Rice Challenge gave them a really hands on way to take action.
The group completed not one but two challenges. Over 2 weeks, the S3 pupils sold 180kg of rice to teachers, family and friends and developed their marketing skills at the same time with input from Aberdeen University’s business school to support the pupils with their marketing techniques. They are gearing up for yet another Rice Challenge!
Congratulations to the S3 interdisciplinary learning pupils, along with their teacher Jayne Davidson from Bucksburn Academy.
Fair Trade and Sustainability Award sponsored by Energy Agency
As a boy, our winner witnessed the tough life faced by the garment workers of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He made it his life’s work to bring change.
Now, his work in research, teaching and campaigning is raising awareness of Fair Trade by giving a voice to the unheard garment workers of Bangladesh and other nations. Together with academic, NGO and policy partners, the team is enabling policy change to ensure that profits are not made at the expense of people.
On June 15th 2022, in a parliamentary drop-in session at Westminster with NGO Transform Trade our winner shared the research findings.
This evidence base provides solid grounds for the introduction of the Bill for a Fashion Watchdog to regulate the supply chain and abolish exploitation of garment workers in the global South, and we look forward to hearing about progress following the next reading in November. What a great achievement.
The team headed up by our winner also drives change by embedding fair trade accountability into the learning curriculum at University of Aberdeen and has created free online learning resources.
Our winner is Professor Muhammad Azizul Islam at the University of Aberdeen Business School.
Many congratulations to Professor Islam as the winner of the Fair Trade and Sustainability Award.
Read more about the work of Professor Islam and team here.
Special Recognition Awards
There are two winners this year.
Our first winner was the Sustainability Co-ordinator at St Andrews University 2021-22.
At the conclusion of her tenure the university received the Fairtrade University and College Award 2022 in recognition of its commitment to ethical and sustainable consumption. This prestigious award encourages the development of new and innovative ways of engaging in a range of activities including procurement practices, awareness raising and campaigning. Our winner recruited students as volunteer auditors, giving them training and equipping them with transferable skills and the experience of conducting audits. The receipt of this award was recognition of the work undertaken during the year, building of course, on that of predecessors. As she wrote, “by encouraging students to explore their understanding of the social and environmental impacts of their decisions, and making ethical and sustainable the norm, institutions can have a hugely positive influence on the graduates who will become the next generation of leaders.”
Congratulations Hannah Bowey.
Our second winner is Anne Walsh, West Lothian Fairtrade Group.
Anne became interested in Fairtrade started when she noticed Teadirect on the supermarket shelves, and subsequently decided to include a stall at the church Summer Fare in 2002. She then went on to become a Fairtrade speaker with Traidcraft and to support their People to People trips to Cuba, India and Peru. Anne has been involved in so much awareness raising of Fair Trade in her local communities in schools, churches and with other groups, she joined the Livingston group when it was set up and is currently a member of West Lothian’s Fair Trade group. Anne is a big supporter of the Scottish Fair Trade Forum as a member and attends all our events. She is also a regular attendee of meetings of the Cross Party Group in the Scottish Parliament on Fair Trade. And now after the Covid lockdowns, she’s now back on the road with her Fair Trade stall which is coming to our Campaigner Conference on the 19th of this month in Linlithgow.
Congratulations Anne.
Thank you and congratulations to all our our winners.
Thank you to our sponsors, The Energy Agency who sponsor the Fair Trade and Sustainability Award, Scotmid Co-operative who sponsor the Outstanding Achievement Award, Anderson Strathern who sponsored the Fair Trade Business Award and Sisaltech who sponsored the Innovation Award.
Thank you to our nominators and to all those nominated.
Special thanks to Roopa Mehta, President, World Fair Trade Organisation for sending us a message of encouragement and congratulations.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the winners event, including our guests from Malawi and elsewhere.
