At the October meeting of the Stewartry U3A, Katherine Naylor who is Chairperson of Kirkcudbright Fairtrade Town Group, gave an inspiring talk about her visit in 2013 to Manos Amigas, a Fairtrade company in Peru. The company works with many different indigenous families of craft workers, many in isolated mountain areas of Peru.
The aim of Fairtrade is to fight poverty in underdeveloped areas of the world through the trade of goods made by people in the local communities and by ensuring that they receive a fair price for their goods. This enables the craft producers to expand production and encourage others to produce goods for sale In Peru she had found that as well as coping with working in remote areas some producers work had been affected by local terrorist activity.
Katherine showed examples of the different goods from Peru and told of the families who had made them. The goods ranged from embroidery to woven goods such as hats and shawls and tiny gloves and also wooden goods. She also explained how gourds grown locally in Peru could be made into different goods. This involved washing the gourds and then leaving them to dry naturally after which they were decorated with complicated patterns and coloured with natural dyes.
As an example of how Fairtrade funds could help local communities Katherine described how a church in Lima had used the funds to provide meals for children and had set up a numeracy and literacy project for children in slum areas.
The Fairtrade catalogue includes goods made in many underdeveloped areas of the world and Katherine said that the reach of Fairtrade would expand as more people bought their goods.
The speaker at the next meeting of the Stewartry U3A on Tuesday 28 November will be Professor Don Cowell who will tell us about Kirkcudbright Poor House. The talk will be proceeded by the AGM at 2.00pm but members are asked to come along from 1.15pm for registration and payment of an annual subscription of £20.