News
29/02/2008
A Fairtrade Group
It’s Fairtrade Fortnight! To highlight this national event, running from 25 February to 9 March, we spoke to Ben Hannen, Scout Leader with the 1st Great Missenden Scout Group, who's Group has woken up and smelt the Fairtrade coffee:
The Troop became aware of Fairtrade during its work on the Global Challenge in 2006. The leader team made the decision to adopt a policy of buying organic and Fairtrade products whenever possible for the Troop. This basically meant buying Fairtrade for camps and for Troop meetings that involved food.
I informed the parents about our decision, adding that we should still stay pretty much within our normal budget. The response has been very positive. In fact, when one parent dropped her child at the Centenary Camp last year she said she was sad she was missing out on all the meals we were cooking when she saw the stores in the mess tent.
We buy Fairtrade tea, coffee, hot chocolate, sugar, orange juice, lemons, bananas, and chocolate biscuits.As more products become available we will also buy those.
We had Fairtrade tea and coffee at our AGM last year, and hopefully this year the wine will be Fairtrade as well. Even our 100th birthday cake, made by my wife and Assistant Scout Leader Elspeth, for the Sunrise Camp was made with Fairtrade Sugar.
We are trying to turn our Troop initiative into a Group one. As part of their work towards the Chef Badge last month, our Beaver Patrol made apple crumble.They used Fairtrade Sugar, and we also discussed using Fairtrade ingredients when we cook.
‘Fairtrade Fortnight has prompted me to contact the Fairtrade Foundation to suggest the idea of"Fairtrade Scout Groups". I had the idea of Scout Groups being able to be accredited as fair-trade last year when I learnt more about Fairtrade Towns, Schools and Faith Groups.
I thought that it would be great if there could be some guidelines or requirements for Scout Groups to fulfil which would then enable them to be Fairtrade Scout Groups, much in the same was as the other groups.
There is a lot of cross over between the aims of Fairtrade and the various Scouting badge requirements, so it seemed an ideal partnership, and a great way to spread the Fairtrade message. I am looking forward to hearing what they have to say.
For more informations and Programme ideas there are some good resources on the Fairtrade Foundation website, Programmes Online, and the Dubble website (the Fairtrade chocolate bar) .
