Some pics from the Fairtrade tasting sessions at both COOP FORUM and ICA Maxi.

 
 
 
 
Some pics from Rättviseakademin on the 15th of October.

Some pics from the gig at Söderport on the 13th of Oct.

Fairtrade Fokus in Kalmar - summary

Over the last two weeks I have helped to organiser a whole load of events in Kalmar as volunteer campaign coordinator for Fairtrade Fokus - Fairtrade Swedens campaign to improve awareness about Fairtrade and improve sales of Fairtrade-certified products. Overall I am very happy with the campaign which has meant that we have met 100s more residents in Kalmar and spread the word about Fairtrade.

The first event was a gig at Söderport café, Kalmars best cafés if you ask me. Anes, the owner, was kind enough to let us use his place and he bought in Fairtrade wine and coffee especially for the event. Elisabeth and I were there early to set up our table, then came the artists to sound check, then the audience started filtering in. I opened the evening at 7pm and handed over to Jonas Löhnn from the local Green Party who handed over a Fairtrade football to Angelica who had won a Fairtrade competition that they'd had earlier in the year. Then Kim Stranne, the first artist of the evening, got up on stage and help a brilliant 45 min set with really funny and entertaining chat in between songs. Kim always buys fairtrade coffee and can't survive without a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. He performed, amongst others, his song "Svarta diamanten" (trans. black diamond) about the coffee industry which he did with feeling and warmth. Next up was young artist Leo who performed a number of acoustic songs and the final band was a trio called Electric Alice who played four songs plus an encore. All bands were well appreciated by the audience which managed to fill Söderport café almost to capacity. The local newspaper Östran came and took photos and reported on the gig and the campaign which was great.

Next up we had a visit from a group of young enthusiasts from Stockholm who had prepared a evening of lectures, workshops, competitions and had even made a short film all about fair trade, but even touched on the climate issue. Those of us who were there had a really nice evening, just a shame that not more people came to enjoy the evening.

We had a rest over the weekend, but the following Tuesday was Nordic Fairtrade Challenge, a coffee-break competition to see which of the Nordic countries could get as many people as possible to consume at least one Fairtrade product at an organised coffee break. Sweden came out champions with over 130 000 people taking part which was great news. At our coffee break at the students' union in Kalmar, we had a visit from the TV company TV4 who spent about a half an hour filming us and asking us questions. It was a bit nervous to be in front of the camera, but fun to see myself on TV the next day! At our coffee break, we managed to get 71 people to try Fairtrade which was great and it was great to hear how many other people had participated in coffee breaks all over Kalmar.

On Wednesday we organised a lecture/discussion with Emma Rung who had come down from Stockholm to talk about Fairtrade. Emma told us about her latest visit to producers in Peru and how, at one farm, they had invested in a pack-horse to help transport their goods whereas at another, they had invested in a high-wire which they used to transport the harvested bananas downt the hillside, taking the weight off their backs. I also had the chance to present some slides from PhD student Lina Lindells research which was also about the human impact of organic and fair trade farming on local farmers. We were a fair-sized group who attended the lecture with people from the university, students and personnel, as well as other from the municipality and the World Shop.

The campaign was nicely rounded off with free tasting sessions both at the supermarket COOP FORUM on Friday and today at ICA MAXI. I had help from 8 other volunteers in total which meant that we could do loads more that I otherwise could have done. We managed to give out all over free samples of icing-sugar and herbal tea. Yesterday the newspaper Östran came to report and the article, with a nice colour photo, was in today's paper which is great.

Thanks to all those volunteers, companies and organisation that took part in Kalmars campaign and helped it to be a great success.

Sam Edgecombe
Campaign Coordinate for Fairtrade Fokus 2009 in Kalmar

Abigail Victoria Squirrell

Taken on the 5th of Jan when I went to visit for the day. She had just done a massive poo and is looking rather contented.