We hope you had a great Fairtrade Fortnight and enjoyed all the excitement of The Big Swap. Hopefully you had time to attend events, read all of the great Big Swap news stories and swap your usual products to Fairtrade.
The Big Swap challenge was met and indeed surpassed, with more than one million 43 thousand registered swaps to date. London came in fourth place nationally, with 107,000 swaps! Good work Londoners (next year we’ll see if we can beat the North-west, where the top swappers were!). See the Fairtrade Foundation’s press release for more information.
If you haven’t already, any registered swappers can download the Big Swap Songs album featuring Paolo Nutini swapping his usual backing band for The Big Ghana band.
Thanks for taking part in The Big Swap!
Fairtrade Fortnight is now down to its last few days, and thus it’s a good time to celebrate the milestones so far, as well as thinking of what still remains to be done during the Big Swap this year.
One big thing is to register your swaps, and encourage others to do so as well! The Foundation still needs over 300,000 more swaps before Sunday to meet the goal of one million and one swaps. So please make sure to take part and spread the word to help reach the target.
There have been some great events so far, including tasting stalls, Mad Hatter tea parties, and the Strictly Fairtrade Tea Dance. Please check out some of the photos and videos from the tea dance, which was a big success. Thanks to everyone who came and helped or danced!
Also there are still a number of great events coming up for the rest of Fortnight. One particularly special item will be the Treat Me Fair concert at the Barbican on 7th March. With the support of Divine Chocolate, young people from City of London have collaborated with Guildhall Connect professional workshop leaders to compose and perform a concert inspired by the themes of Fairtrade. This performance will explore the fusion of African drumming, Mc-ing and Song writing and will be introduced by Cocoa Farmers from Ghana.
Find out more here, including how to book your tickets – free but must be booked in advance!
For a list of other great events taking place for the rest of fortnight, see our Events listings.
We had a lovely event yesterday as part of The Big Swap @ My Coffee Stop. Enfield Tenor, Geoffrey Strum serenaded commuters in the morning rush while we gave out free Fairtrade Cafe Direct Tea, Divine Chocolate, Fairtrade London Guides and the Little Books of Big Swaps. Watch him brightening travellers’ days here:
