CHARITY DONATIONSThe aim of Fair Trade is to create trade relationships where people have sustainable employment, not to provide emergency relief. However we do receive appeals from our suppliers sometimes for charitable donations in the event of particular disasters and we try to help, using money we raise from the sale of 2nd hand books, donated stamps and any spare cash we might occasionally be able to find… We have felt for a long time that we should keep you better informed, and from now on hope to provide an update each year. In the past two years (from 1 April 2017 to 31 July 2019) donations made have been:
Bearing in mind that we also recently donated £1,000 for flood relief in Kashmir, a significant number of appeals have related to the effects of the climate crisis, which are expected to fall largely on the South, and are already obvious in countries like India. To recognise our responsibility as an importer of goods from around the world, we recently decided to impose a 10% climate crisis levy on ourselves on most products we import by air, and products made of plastic, the proceeds to be used for projects which help to combat the effects of global warming (see our Environmental Policy for details). |