Send us a textIn 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...
Send us a textIn 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 Com...
Send us a textIn 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 ...
Send us a textIn 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...
Send us a textIn 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 ...
Send us a textIn 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 t...
Send us a textIn 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!Audio track that introduces all episodes Audio clip to exit all episodes in podcast
Send us a textMichael 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...
Send us a textWelcome 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, follo...
Send us a textIn this episode I am delighted to be talking with Rachel Farey of the One World Shop in Edinburgh. It's a beautiful shop positioned at the western end of Princes Street in Edinburgh with the historic castle as a backdrop.Rachel has had an interesting journey that started with working with L'Arche after she left school. L'arche is an international federation of Non-profit organisations working to create networks of community where people with and without intellectual disabilities...
Send us a textIn this episode we are playing a recording of a talk by Sally Sawaya of Meru Herbs in Kenya that she gave recently to the staff of True Origin and Rainbow Turtle in Paisley, Scotland. Sally is the managing director of Meru Herbs, the Kenyan fair trade company that produces tasty sauces, jams and herbal teas. Meru is a semi arid region of the country where, for many years, water was hard to obtain for farming and domestic use. Things changed just over 30 years ago with a collabor...
Send us a textIn this episode we meet Mary Popple the current chair of JTS, the company that imports fair trade goods into Scotland and distributes them throughout the UK.Mary grew up in Northern Ireland during the 50s and 60s on the border between the republic and the north. Her father was a church minister who tried not to take sides and, as tensions increased, took his family to Scotland. Those early years in northern Ireland gave Mary a strong sense of the importance of equality and of tr...
Send us a textIn this episode we bring you part 2 of the John Riches interview. (If you've not heard it, do check out part 1 where John talks about his early life and influences.)We join John where he talks about setting up the Balmore Trust and The Coach House, instruments that were used to generate funds for overseas projects. Very quickly they got involved in buying products from people in small communities in Asia when they realised it was better to do that than give them grants. From the...
Send us a textIn this episode, John tells interesting stories of working in a refugee camp in Austria after the 2nd world war, of being a chaplain at Cambridge University at the height of the student protests in the late 60s; working in the Transkei in South Africa during the apartheid era and meeting anti-apartheid activist, Steve Biko. He covers his time at Glasgow University teaching about the new testament in the bible and following a student out to Burmah to meet local villagers trying t...
Send us a textThis short taster introduces Series 2 of the podcast. In this new series we'll be bringing you interviews with John Riches founder of JTS, Mary Popple of the St. Andrews Fair Trade Group and current chair of JTS and the Alternative Coffee Co. an exciting project that links fair trade speciality coffee farmers from Uganda and Rwanda with micro coffee roasters in the UK.
Send us a textWe have another throwback podcast for you where we're back to fair trade fortnight in 2016 and to Josh Brown's original Rainbow Turtle podcast series. This is part 2 of the episode that we re-released back in the beginning of January. In this part, Josh interviews Martin Rhodes and Graham Clark of the Scottish Fair Trade Forum at their AGM, where he also meets fair trade campaigner, Mary Alice Mansell of the Lochwinnoch fair trade group. He talks to rice farmer, Howard...
Send us a textThis episode takes us back to February 2016 to the very first Rainbow Turtle podcast which was previously thought to be lost. Part 1 of this episode takes us on a fair trade journey:It starts with founder, Liz Cotton, talking to school pupils.It then chats to attendees at the Scottish Fair Trade Forum AGM,Before Ross Beattie looks at fair trade in Uzbekistan and Lynsay Bellshaw talks about her average day at Rainbow Turtle. The episode finishes with an interview with rice f...
Send us a textWelcome to this special Christmas episode of the Rainbow Turtle Rebooted podcast where I’m delighted to be able to interview Pauline Tiffen of the Journal of Fair Trade. Ever since I started this series I have been trying to get Pauline onto it. I first heard her speak at a Scottish Fair Trade Forum lecture back in the summer of 2020, at the height of lock down, when she spoke about the future of fair trade. It struck me then that her thinking about fair trade was on a different...
Send us a textThis is the 2nd part of Martin Rhode’s talk that he gave to Rainbow Turtle at their AGM back in October. In part one he talked about the links between COP26 and Fair Trade. In this episode he answers questions from the audience and goes into some of the areas more deeply. Some of the questions he dealt with were:How did we prevent the global south paying for the cost of the climate emergency, What was happening to tariffs that was preventing producers from exporting finishe...
Send us a textIn this episode we talk to Mauro Pereira from Brazil. He is the executive director of Defenders of the Planet, an environmental campaign group based in Rio de Janiero. He is attending the COP26 summit as the focal point for Latin America for the sustainable development goals.Mauro talks passionately about our environment, especially at what has been lost or destroyed in his home country, he talks about his early influences and what led him to campaign for the environment.This ep...