Rainbow Turtle Rebooted Fair Trade Podcast

Welcome to series 4 of Rainbow Turtle Rebooted Podcast. This is a short taster to give you an idea of what will be coming up during fair trade fortnight 2025. 

Earlier in the year Linda Okhouya Ologe and I went out to meet some of the staff from Green City Wholefoods in the east end of Glasgow. Our interesting interviews with them form the basis of this series.

Our first episode will be with Babs NicGriogor. Babs has worked across the organisation and has a really good understanding of cooperatives and how they work. We also interviewed Scott Irwin, their longest standing employee, who has a great knowledge of the organisation and its history. Finally we meet Emma Hillcoat, the newest member of the team, who talks about working for the cooperative and the difference that it makes in the attitude of staff to their workplace.

In addition, I'll be bringing you an interview that I had with Malawian rice farmer, Howard Msukwa. True Origin asked me to interview Howard 12 months ago, about his thoughts on how better food behaviours can improve wellbeing and increase equity. I was kindly given the recording by True Origin to use for our podcast.

Episode 1 of Series 4 comes out Monday 22nd September with our interview with Babs NicGriogor and I'll be bringing the other episodes out every few days during fair trade fortnight.

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In this episode we introduce you to two more volunteers with the organisation.

First up is Anne Scriven. Anne has been involved in fair trade for a long time, starting with her local church group in Kirkintilloch though to helping out in the Rainbow Turtle shop, various stalls and events.

We finish with Steph Mayo who started out as a community worker helping local women's group who were interested in global issues. This lead to a meeting with Maureen Brough, a long term volunteer with Rainbow Turtle, helped Steph to get involved. Now Steph volunteers in the shop and is a trustee of the charity.

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In this mini episode we meet our education officer, Linda Okhuoya Ologe. Linda has been on maternity leave for this past year and, just before fair trade fortnight, I popped round to Linda's house to interview her and to hold her new baby, Zoraya!

As well as talking about fair trade, Linda spoke about an interesting project that she'd been involved in to bring fair trade coffee beans from Rwanda and Uganda to Paisley. She linked a new social enterprise, The Alternative Coffee Company, that imported the green beans from the cooperatives, with a small, high quality coffee roaster in the town, called The Gatehouse Coffee Roasters. With this venture she has created a beautiful connection between Paisley and farmers in Uganda and Rwanda.

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In episode 6 of our current series we meet 3 more volunteers from Rainbow Turtle.

First up is Kitty McEachen, an escapee from Glasgow who, to her surprise, found that Paisley wasn't such a bad place to live in, especially when she came upon Rainbow Turtle and some of the committed volunteers, including the inspiring founder, Liz Cotton.

Next we have Duncan Macintosh, a long term supporter of fair trade, and early stall holder, who became a volunteer in the shop when he retired in 2009.

Finally we meet Marianne Sermanni, volunteer and trustee of the charity who, though her friendship with Roisin Mulholland (we spoke to Roisin in episode 2), started working in the shop in 2017.

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In episode 5 of series 3 of our podcast we meet Elise Kelly, our creative shop manager. Elise has been in charge for about three and a half years. She joined us when we were just coming out of covid when things were tight and sales were poor. During that time Elise has transformed Rainbow Turtle shop into a bright and colourful place to come and buy fair trade products. 

After Elise we have Jonathan Barr, one of our younger volunteers, who was unemployed when he first joined and now has developed a broad set of retail skills.

Finally, we have Sarah Hurst, our newest volunteer, who combines her background in sales with her developing aptitude in social media to help promote the shop on Facebook and Instagram.

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In this episode we introduce you to Joyce Jackson who started out as a fair trade stall holder in her local church before being inveigled into volunteering at the shop by Liz Cotton when she retired 7 or 8 years ago.

Following Joyce we have Clotilde Raydon, who 6 years ago came into the shop to get some refills for cleaning products. After a couple of visits, Liz Cotton, the then manager and director of the shop, invited Clotilde to become a volunteer. 

Finally, we hear from Chris Johnstone, volunteer, director of the shop and chair of the charity trustees. He started out in fair trade when his GP's practice became the first fair trade practice in Scotland.

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In this episode we meet Juliet Robb of Olive Tree, a charity that buys products from crafts people in Palestine and then sells them in Scotland. The money provides the artisans with a living and any profits made from the sales goes to support charities in Palestine.

Juliet first thought about working with people from Palestine after a trip to the Holy Land. At the end of the trip, the minister said to her, "so what are you now going to do!" She now has a successful organisation that sells quality, jewellery, embroidery and ceramics that involves about 20 volunteers, all run out of her house!

I hope that, like me, you'll be inspired by this courageous woman.

[Photo courtesy of Paisley Daily Express]

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In this mini episode, we meet long standing Rainbow Turtle volunteers: Gillian Henry, Roisin Mulholland and Maureen Brough. In it they share why fair trade is important to them and what are their favourite products that they can buy in the shop. Unsurprisingly, chocolate and coffee feature high on their lists!

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Michael Gidney, currently the chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation, has worked for at least 30 years in international development (which corresponds nicely with the 30th anniversary of FT movement in UK). He started out as a teacher in Kenya and then for their children's services in an orphanage, has worked with Voluntary Services Overseas and with Amnesty International. He joined Traidcraft in 19991 and became Director of Policy, then moved to the Fairtrade Foundation in 2009 as deputy executive director and has been chief executive since 2012. He is also a trustee of Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
This was a most interesting interview where we discussed the dangers of commoditisation of products and the importance of fair trade to producers and farmers. 

[Photo of Michael Gidney courtesy of Michael Gidney] 

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Welcome to series 3 of Rainbow Turtle Rebooted the podcast that brings you the people and their stories from the world of fair trade. In this series we interview Michael Gidney, the chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation, the organisation that oversees fair trade in the UK. We also meet Juliet Robb, the founder of Olive Tree, the charity that buys goods from artisans in the holy land in order to support them and their families. 

We also have something new for you, following some feedback that we received, saying that we don't really explain what Rainbow Turtle is, we've set up a number of short interviews from our volunteers who talk about how they got involved in the organisation and what their favourite fair trade product is.

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