Cardiff Met’s Fairtrade Fortnight event was a massive hit for everyone involved as you can see from the mention from the Welsh Government Cabinet statement above.
Jane Hutt MS, Minister for Social Justice – Cabinet Statement, published 10th March 2023
“I attended a number of events to mark Fairtrade Fortnight. Firstly, I visited Cardiff Metropolitan University on St David’s Day. The student led body continue to be an exemplar of the excellent work taking place throughout Wales. The University was recently awarded first place in the People and Planet University League for year 2022/23. This was out of 153 UK universities.”
Cardiff Met’s Fairtrade Fortnight event was a massive hit for everyone involved as you can see from the mention from the Welsh Government Cabinet statement above.
Chocolate and ice cream are always a great treat and when combined with the knowledge that you are making a genuine difference to people’s lives makes that even better. There was an amazing buzz around the event and we cannot thank everyone who attended enough, you really were the ones who made it special; The day before the event Fay, Rachel and myself (your sustainability team) were on Llandaff campus talking to students and finding out what Fairtrade meant to them and what they knew about the foundation and many students we talked to came the next day to learn even more.
During the event we heard from Oluwatosin Subuloye, one of our international students who told us about his family and how he taught them about Fairtrade after learning of the foundation during last years Fairtrade Fortnight, the bananas grown in his village back home are now all certified Fairtrade and the village is now thriving because of this; we also heard from the Welsh Minister for Social Justice, Jane Hutt - telling us how Wales is the first ‘Fairtrade nation’ and how proud she is to be able to call herself Welsh. According to Richard, Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Cardiff Met it was “Just wanted to say that was the most fun ministerial visit I’ve seen” and that he spoke to Minister and their team after the event and it was clear they had a great time.
A special congrats to Jude Osbourne the winner of our chocolate tasting quiz, Asher Moorley (myself) the winner of the Fairtrade cotton hoodie supplied by the Print Studio - we hope you enjoyed your fairtrade goodies!
The chocolate quiz invited students to try a variety of Fairtrade chocolates and guess flavours, cocoa content and prices and the Fairtrade quiz allowed us to flex what we had learned about Fairtrade and various banana facts.
As the sustainability PTO, Fairtrade is really important to me, one of the aims of the foundation is a focus on sustainable growth and I am a big believer that sustainable practices are only truly sustainable if the people involved can be safe and well, something that the Fairtrade foundation aims to support – farmers are only going to keep up with planet friendly practices if they can keep themselves and their children fed whilst doing it. The Fairtrade foundation allows people all over the world to give themselves a sustainable and fair wage and protect the planet for their children and this is something we should all strive to support as much as we can.
Special thanks to Fairtrade Wales, Rachel Roberts, Oluwatosin Subuloye, Daniel Tiplady
Written by
Asher Moorley, SU Environmental Part Time Officer
Fay Brinsdon, Societies and Opportunities Officer