Cultivating Fairtrade in Dublin

Today was World Humanitarian Day, and in Dublin the Cultivate Centre hosted an open day in the old ENFO offices in Suffolk Street at which Concern aid workers and others were discussing what they do, and inviting everyone to have a FREE fairtrade coffee. Concern is a great organisation, but few people know of Cultivate which is the irish centre for development of Transition Towns, and sustainable communities. All in all an excellent event. Hopefully as a wealthy (oh yes, even in deep recession that's a fact !) people, we find it in our ? hearts ? (and elsewhere) to do the right thing more regularly. So, a fairtrade toast (wine, coffee, vodka even) tonight to Concern, Fairtrade Mark Ireland, and Cultivate.

New Irish get fairtrade faster

Another day talking to retailers on the ground about new Fairtrade products. Most revealing is the fact that the Wish4 Fairtrade range was most enthusiastically welcomed by a newcomer to Ireland. A very friendly manager at Costcutter, born somewhere outside of europe/USA.

Although Fairtrade is now taught in every national and secondary school in the land, shop managers seem mostly unaware, and are missing out on a chance to convert €000's in their annual sweet sales to €000's in Fairtrade sweet sales. And all those local students are their future customers too.

Fairtrade Twitterings

After all these months, and over 400 tweets, I finally discovered the little button that gives you access to the DIRECT tweets that you receive from others. Like getting a reply to your message. Turns out I had a load of these, and embarrassingly had never followed up on them. So, apologies to Green Party minister Ciaran Cuffe, for those of you watching in Ireland, and to the likes of Shrewsbury Fairtrade Town, and certianly to Bangor Fairtrade Town for those of you watching in UK.

It showed me how useful Twittier can be in bringing together like minded people, and after a free trial of 'Tweet Adder' I think I'll be even more able to enjoy the growing international enthusiasm for Fairtrade.

I even came across a couple of overseas suppliers, and although Malawi has few twitterers, it is a special place for me, and one I would love to serve in a more practical way by helping develop small enterprises.

If I can do it to a standard approved by Enterprise Ireland, I guess I should be able to contribute to entrepreneurship in Malawi.

Not quite sure how that might work out, and meantime we have to focus on the day job which is all about getting college catering outlets well prepared for new terms with plenty of Wish4 Blueberry Muffins etc.