Start date and end date of the Action: 1 April – 31 December 2015
The project fostered the “FairTrade Region- Bucklige Welt- Wechselland” by reaching out to other sectors of civil society and used a cross sectoral approach.
Within the project the Guidebook “How to make a region fair” was produced and published in two languages.
The book was disseminated online to more than 75 organisations or umbrella organisations or networks in the field of development, development education and of course Fair Trade European-wide, and the dissemination is continued in 2016 among others via CONCORD’s communication channels to all its members.
Furthermore, overall 37 awareness raising events and actions took place in different towns in April and May – during the Fair Weeks of the region. Workshops with kindergartens, schools and youth groups; workshop days about cotton and “cacao” at primary schools; breakfasts and fair and healthy snacks in the kindergartens; catering with Fair Trade coffee at music school concert; an advanced training with the topic “Fairer Trade” for pedagogues; fair dining; fair roses; exhibitions with Fair Trade coffee in e.g. parishes; world shop day with fair fashion and fair buffet; the Fair Trade Theatre Play; and movie evenings are examples of the activities. 20 of the events were workshops targeted at schools and included on average 20 pupils per class which means that we reached around 400 pupils in the region. In addition, two of the workshops were also an introduction to Südwind exhibition “Globalisierung gestalten“ which was available for the whole school for several days (approx. 10 days in the town of Warth and the town of Edlitz), where many more than 20 pupils saw the exhibition. The topics were mainly focused on Fair Trade reaching out into other global issues such as human rights and climate change leading to a deepened knowledge about a fairer World. At the beginning of each workshop, information about the EYD2015 was given for example to the pupils, teachers and headmasters of the schools.
The Regional Fair Trade Conference took place in the town of Lanzenkirchen in November. Around 40 visitors, among them many mayors, teachers and other decision makers, got together to review their achievements in the last year and plan proper steps for the upcoming time. Also three guests from a neighboring region attended to see how the process in the region is working, to use it as a model for their own region. The exhibition organised in connection to the conference reached around 150 pupils and another 50 adults from the region in the open days of a High School in Lanzenkirchen.
A poster to promote the campaign was developed and sent to every local community in the region and other “hotspots”, such as schools or parishes. Five articles on “Development Policy in 2015”, “the EYD2015”, “Education”, “Mobile Phones”, and “Fair Trade Region “Bucklige Welt- Wechselland”, also including the focus of the EYD2015 in all, were written and published in “Umwelt & Energie” magazine. The number of copies of each edition of the magazine is 31,000, and in fact, this number of copies per edition was raised by 1,000 by the editors this year.