Fair Trade news and events

Lord Provost Fair Trade Awards 2013

The winners of this year's Edinburgh Lord Provost Fair Trade Awards were:

LP Fair Trade Newcomer Award: Summerhall - The former Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies has only been operating since January 2012. They have chosen to use Fair Trade tea and coffee in their café and restaurant and jointly ran a fair trade event with Equal Exchange to mark Fairtrade Fortnight 2013. Summerhall is an exciting community venue which is home to a number of creative businesses.

LP Fair Trade Faith Community Award: South Leith Parish Church - Demonstrated a strong commitment to Fair Trade through an exchange programme with students from Kenya. They use Fair trade products in their café and also provide free breakfasts for homeless people. The judges particularly liked the global and local demonstration of their support for people in poverty.

LP Fair Trade Achievement Award: Hand Up Media - This is an ethical publishing and media company that has showed outstanding commitment to Fair Trade over a long period of time and has worked tirelessly to enhance Fair Trade within Edinburgh and across Scotland. The company produced the Fair Trade guide to Scotland and ran the annual Christmas Ethical Fayre on Castle Street.

Lord Provost Fair Trade School Award: Dean Park Primary and Leith Primary (joint winners)

The Lord Provost announced the winner of the Lord Provost's Fair Trade School Award for 2013 on Tuesday 5 March at a very successful Fair Trade school event in Holy Rood High School.

This year's Award was shared by Dean Park Primary and Leith Primary schools. Both schools presented very strong applications. The judges particularly welcomed the schools' strong links with the wider community to promote fair trade.

Dean Park: Embedded an approach to Fair Trade across all ages from nursery to Primary 7 and has evidence to show eight years of commitment. The school has very strong links to the local Fair Trade group in Balerno.

Leith: Forged strong links with Uganda, through the Budongo project at Edinburgh Zoo, and with the local community. Has an active Fair Trade committee and ran an enterprise project on Fair Trade school uniforms.

Lord Provost, Donald Wilson, said: "The packed programme of events we've been enjoying over the past two weeks is testament to just how far Fairtrade Fortnight has come in Edinburgh since we were awarded Fairtrade status in 2004."

"Through this campaign and the Lord Provost's Fairtrade Awards we are encouraging more people to become ethical shoppers while recognising the fantastic contribution that individuals and businesses are making to fair trade throughout Edinburgh."

The winners of the Edinburgh School's competition to design a fair trade leaflet for their community were also announced. The Primary School award went to St Mary's RC Primary School (Edinburgh) and the Secondary award was shared by Royal Blind School and St George's School. The winning leaflets from the schools will be produced professionally for distribution in their local community.

Also at this event, pupils from Blackhall Primary School presented two You Tube animated videos, one looking at fair trade products and what is available in their local area and the other looking at world demographics.