Image: Fairtrade Foundation

Celebrations of Fairtrade Fortnight in Hackney were made extra special this year as, thanks to a grant from Hackney Council, we were able to ‘buy in’  presentations from Ketra Kyosiimire, a visiting female coffee producer from Uganda who gave interesting, illustrated talks on how coffee is grown and how fairtrade benefits the growers and their communities, helping them to have better housing, schools and health centres.

Ketra gave her first Hackney presentations to interested, well informed pupils at Harrington Hill school who added much to their knowledge of growing and buying fairtrade.
Fittingly, Ketra’s next visit was to an exciting, well attended Women’s Day Celebration at the Redmond Centre, Woodberry Down, where our stall offered free samples of fairtrade easter eggs, biscuits and drinks amongst many other products and a fairtrade raffle with prizes including delicious chocolate eggs from the Coop and a fairtrade football.

Image: Ketra and Sandra McLeod at the Women's Day event, Redmond Center.

Ketra’s final visit was to another community event after the Sunday morning service at Frampton Park Baptist Church. Once again the community turned out in force to support her presentation and much interest was shown in our stall and the future use of fairtrade products in their café.

Image: Karma Cola

We would like to thank all venues for hosting us, as well as Hackney Cooperative stores and Karma Cola for donations to our stall and The Fairtrade Foundation for organising Ketra’s visits to Hackney.

By Sandra McLeod