County’s leading fair trade store bucks gloomy High Street trend

Small retailers in Norfolk can maximise their chances of weathering the economic storm by concentrating on business ethics – that’s the message from the county’s biggest fair trade retailer, which is reporting strong sales growth in 2008.

The Living Rooms, in Poringland, saw sales grow by nine per cent year-on-year, with sales in the final quarter of 2008 a full 15 per cent ahead of the same period in 2007. The business, housed in a 4000 ft2 converted barn on the outskirts of Norwich, imports and sells fair- and ethically-traded goods for the homes and garden from all over the developing world. 

“There is a perception that when times are tough, people’s principles become less important,” said Jill Roberson, who runs the business with husband Stephen. “But what we are proving is that by sticking to our ethical vision, we are performing better than the High Street as a whole. It’s great to see that Norfolk people are not abandoning the concept of ethical shopping in the recession.

“There is a lesson here for Norfolk’s locally-owned retailers: when money is scarce, shoppers think more carefully where they spend their money, and that can benefit those of us who run businesses based on a guiding principle and vision.”

The Living Rooms growth came throughout its product range, with even furniture sales holding up during a tough period for homeware retailers. Christmas was a particularly strong period, with gifts and decorations contributing strong growth.

“This year most people changed their Christmas shopping habits,” said Mrs Roberson. “Instead of simply throwing money at the task, many people thought a bit harder about what presents they would give, and this has benefited us.

“It’s clear that 2009 is going to be very tough for everyone in retail, but it is gratifying to know that by sticking to our ethical principles we are not just doing the right thing, but we are being supported by Norfolk people as well.”

More details about The Living Rooms can be found at www.the-living-rooms.co.uk.

DivineLifeFest
17th Jan 2009, 10am – 11pm
Shiva Health, 52a Old London Rd, Kingston

Celebrating universal love, creation, synergy, energy & community
*creative & healing arts
*workshops, talks & classes
*uplifting music & spoken word
*organic food & stalls, kids workshops
*special fire ceremony for universal health

Enjoy organic cakes, smoothies & juices yoga classes, health talks & healing…

Browse stalls & buy fairtrade, handmade & holistic goodies…

Have a card reading, get your face painted…

Chill out with evening rhythms, words & inspired performances…

….all of this, whilst supporting Sponsor a Mum charity, making motherhood safer in remote communities around the world

All proceeds go to Sponsor a Mum charity www.imet2000.org/sponsoramum

£5 day | £3 evening | £7 day & evening | kids up to 12 yrs free

View the full program here: www.shivarooms.co.uk/divinelifefest.htm

James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to Launch a New Coffee Social Enterprise on 16th January 2009

The Lorna Young Foundation is hosting an event to launch a new social enterprise – a new brand of directly traded coffee by resident Oromo Ethiopians in Greater Manchester with smallholder coffee growers in Ethiopia.

With the support of the Lorna Young Foundation, Tameside Council and Bolling Coffee, this exciting social enterprise will assist the Oromo community into meaningful employment with all profits going to the community in Greater Manchester and ensuring an excellent price for the coffee growers in Ethiopia

On Friday 16th January in Stalybridge, James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will launch this exciting new business venture. The Bishop of Manchester and Afzal Khan, former Lord Mayor of the City of Manchester will also be attending and backing the initiative.

The Lorna Young Foundation has initiated this new ‘Beyond Fairtrade – community to community’ social enterprise, named ‘The Oromo Coffee Company’ which will cut out the middlemen in purchasing, importing, branding and selling a new Ethiopian coffee within the UK. The new company is owned by the Oromo community who are now in the process of creating and selling their own brand of roast and ground coffee, sourced directly from smallholders in Ethiopia. By shortening the supply chain involved in the sales and marketing of coffee, a greater level of profit – even than achieved by Fair Trade – will be generated for both the social enterprise in Greater Manchester and the coffee growers in Ethiopia.

The venture is being backed by Tameside Council, with commercial support coming from Bolling Coffee, West Yorkshire based coffee company who are experts in importing and roasting coffee from around the world; Bolling will assist the enterprise in importing and processing the new product.

Ian Agnew, Director of the Lorna Young Foundation said “This is a totally unique project. Fair Trade is a brilliant development and is now quite rightly, entering the mainstream. But Fair Trade prices are still limited for most growers. The Lorna Young Foundation wants to go beyond this and It’s excellent to see that the Government here recognise that this kind of initiative needs to be supported. We are so pleased that Bolling Coffee are lending us their assistance and we would like to invite other businesses to come forward to offer support, sponsorship or mentoring to help the enterprise to become a big success when we come to marketing the new coffee”.

The Rev Ian Stubbs, vicar of St George’s church, Stalybridge which has been instrumental in supporting the project idea said “Its been a real privilege to meet members of the Oromo community who came to Tameside as refugees and to see how they are willing to work together on this venture. By supporting this exciting initiative churches and faith groups will build even further on their excellent record in promoting Fairtrade. We hope that by producing a smashing cup of ‘Beyond Fairtrade’ coffee we can also educate people about the exploitation that all too often occurs in the supply chain of commodities that we buy from abroad”

Garedew Yadessa, one of the Oromo community members involved in setting up the enterprise said “It is very encouraging that local people are supporting us to set up this business. It’s important to us to be independent and it’s even better if we can help the coffee growers in Ethiopia to get a better deal because sadly, the coffee market has been famous for its exploitation of smallholder farmers in the past”.

Ian Bamforth, Managing Director of Bolling Coffee said; “Bolling Coffee were really impressed by this initiative. We take the issue of ethical trading very seriously and believe that we have a corporate responsibility to assist marginalised groups. This is an excellent way of doing both – helping out the communities here in the UK and also abroad – whilst providing a high quality cup of coffee”

About the Launch
Friday 16th January at 3pm at Stalybridge Civic Hall, Trinity St, Stalybridge, SK15 2BN. Food and drink will be available.

About the Oromo Ethiopians
The Oromo Ethiopians are a group of around 250 households living primarily in Manchester, Ashton under Lyne, Stalybridge, Bury, Bolton, Oldham, Sheffield, Stockport and Salford as legal refugees with full residential status. They were resettled in the UK during 2006/07 following persecution in Ethiopia.

How Can YOU Help?
The Lorna Young Foundation are looking for corporate sponsorship for the project, both prior to the coffee product being launched later on in 2009 and during its first year of operation. In particular we are seeking to work with businesses or community groups/ faith groups who can:
• Provide monetary donations to support the project
• Produce a design label in order to market the coffee
• Provide a premises or equipment to assist the initiative
• Consider placing an order with The Oromo Coffee Company
• Act as a sales point/ retail outlet for the coffee
• Provide business ‘mentoring’ for the company (i.e. marketing, sales, business planning, publicity etc)

If you feel that you can contribute in any way, please contact the Lorna Young Foundation (below)

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About the Lorna Young Foundation (LYF)
The Lorna Young Foundation was set up in 2003 in memory of the late Lorna Young, a social entrepreneur and a pioneer of fair trade in the UK. As one of the founders of Cafédirect, Lorna was the first person to secure supermarket listing for their products thereby launching the brand from its niche market to the mainstream.

LYF is a UK registered education charity and NGO. Its aims are:
• To reduce poverty and assist sustainable livelihoods by providing business and marketing education for communities in the developing world
• To reduce supply chains and add value to products, enabling fairer competition for farmers in national and international markets places
• To work with communities in the UK and in developing countries in order to promote greater awareness of ethical trading and to empower groups to be able to carry out direct trading and ethical purchases

LYF currently carries out projects with smallholder farmers in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia and Palestine and with the Greater Manchester Ethiopian community. LYF’s ‘Entrepreneur’ programme matches successful businessmen and women with smallholder farming communities in order to share skills and to provide ongoing mentoring within developing countries. LYF is based in West Yorkshire.

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The Lorna Young Foundation
47 Lea Lane, Netherton, Holmfirth, Hudds, HD4 7DP 

Christina Longden: 07951 362068 Ian Agnew: 07944 979721 Email – projectmanager@lyf.org.uk

Registered Charity No. 1112895 Registered Company No. 4788426 www.lyf.org.uk AND www.lyfe.ac

Image courtesy of nkzs 

Beautiful skincare from Latvia

The whole So Organic team absolutely love this new brand from Latvia. The aromas and textures of the Madara products make them a joy to use.

The whole range is fresh, yet luxurious and comes in simple but elegant packaging with the ECOCERT stamp of approval. More about Madara

Why Madara Organic Skin Care Products?
• Highly effective formulations for no compromise organic beauty
• Certified by ECOCERT, the international organic standard
• Based on pure, natural, flower and herb extracts from the Baltic region
• Free from Synthetic fragrance, SLS, parabens and others and irritants
• No animal testing
• Many of the products are Vegan

Buy the complete range of Madara Eco Cosmetics at So Organic, the original organic lifestyle store.

For people interested in a sustainable future
Saturday January 24th 2009 9.30 – 5.00
hosted by Transition Bristol

What’s this training about?
When you (or others) are in conflict how well do you cope?

Would you like to deal with conflict more constructively and creatively?

Does it sometimes seem to be very hard to be true to / stand up for yourself and your values and avoid getting into conflict?

A group can have high aspirations, and yet suffer from internal dynamics that hold it back. We know we need diversity and inclusion, but we can still fall into issues of power and helplessness. Conflicts may float around unresolved in the background and continue to affect the life of the group, and are sometimes only resolved by withdrawal or
exclusion. Unresolved conflicts can bring overwhelm and burn-out.

How did this training come about?
At the recent Transition Cities conference in Nottingham, there was a short workshop on Working with Conflict.  It was facilitated by Iona Fredenburgh and introduced theory and practice from “Process Work”. There was a lot of interest from participants in having a longer training, so here is the first one, hosted by Transition Bristol.“Process Work” has been used all over the world to work creatively with conflict and group dynamics, as well as many other applications. (see below for info links) It welcomes all voices, perspectives and experiences as valuable, and offers skills for facilitating the way they all interact.

Who is it for?
This training aims to be relevant and useful for anyone who wants to add to their relationship and group skills, whether in the Transition movement, Sustainable society work or in everyday life. We will focus especially on skills for leadership and participation in groups. We welcome your interest, and want to share our excitement about creating effective collaboration between those who want to make a difference in our society.  

What will we do?
There will be some theory and lots of practice.  Some of this will be in pairs and small groups, and some as a whole group together. We will share the ‘metaskills’ of respect, curiosity and compassion that make it easier to explore challenging areas.

We will share skills for leadership, facilitation and participation in groups. How to work with conflicts that arise internally, in relationship and in groups, organisation and teams. This will include noticing early signs of conflict, talking about it, and practices for working together creatively to find out more about it and learn from it.We will look at how ‘rank’ differences affect the way we relate to each other, how to notice this and use our rank skilfully. This helps reduce power dynamics in groups. We will show how roles emerge in a group and can interact creatively in group process.

We will explore some of the specific roles and issues that emerge within Transition, and what we can learn from them to strengthen our resilience and sustainability.

Importantly, we will find out how these skills make our practical activities more effective.

There will be an opportunity for lots of interaction and feedback, and for people to bring other questions.

Venue and cost
The workshop will be held at Rookery Farm, Shellards Lane, Alveston, Bristol BS35 3SY

Directions and travel info will be sent out to participants, including lift share info.

Cost is £50 (if the cost is an issue, do contact us). Please send a deposit of £20 asap to Paul Baker at Rookery Farm, cheques made out to Transition Bristol. Please contact Paul paul@paulbakerandcompany.co.uk or 07828882213 if you have any queries.

Please bring lunch for yourself or to share.

The facilitators:

Iona Fredenburgh Dipl POP. I am a Process Work Therapist and Facilitator based in Stroud, where I’ve been involved for several years with Ruskin Mill’s work with land, sustainability, therapeutic education and teenagers with special needs. I’ve worked for over 30 years as a group facilitator in various contexts, including team and leadership development, open forum facilitation in organisational settings, ecopsychology and shamanism. I am a Faculty Member of RSPOPUK, the Process Work Organisation in the UK.

Mark O’Connell Dipl POP, Dipl FT. I am a Process Work Therapist and Facilitator, and a founding member of RSPOPUK, with a private practice in Ipswich. I specialise in working with organisations caring for children, and with young people with Learning Difficulties and EBD. I live on an organic fruit farm from where I co-run The Apricot Centre, an eco-venue for training workshops related to sustainable living www.apricotcentre.co.uk. I have worked for many years in the field of environmentalism and ecopsychology, having designed and co-run the HNC for Sustainable Environments – The Ecology of People and the Land.

More info about Process Work (PW):
Process Work in the UK: www.rspopuk.com
Arny Mindell, founder of PW: www.aamindell.net
Examples of PW around the world:
www.maxfxx.net ; www.deepdemocracymovement.net and www.worldwork.org

Image courtesy of weirdvis

A brand new range of organic skin and body care by Raw Organic is launching this month at So Organic, and you can save 20% off the entire range until the end of the month. Every product in the range is certified by the Soil Association and the performance is quite wonderful.

Click here to see the Raw Organic range.

We test all of the products thoroughly before we put them on sale at SoOrganic.com and the whole team completely fell in love with Raw Organic’s new range. Everything is under £10, everything is Soil Association Certified and it all works beautifully.

The packs are very generous 250ml tubes which are great value, perfect for those looking to switch to organic toiletries but who are cost conscious too, given the current economic conditions.

The Raw Organic range consists of the following:

Juniper & Bitter Orange Moisturising Bar Soap (125g) – £3.50 (now £2.80)
Apple and Elderflower Refreshing Body Wash (250ml) – £8 (now £6.40)
Bilberry and Juniper Conditioning Shampoo (250ml) – £8 (now £6.40)
Apricot and Rosehip Warm-up Massage Oil (100ml) – £8 (now £6.40)
Frankincense and Sandalwood Massage Oil for Delicate Skins – £8 (now £6.40)
Honey & Barley Moisturising Liquid Soap (250ml) – RRP £6 (now £4.80)
Organic Baby Oil (100ml) – £8 (now £6.40)
Spearmint and Eucalyptus Cool-down Massage Oil (100ml) – £8 (now £6.40)
Wild Chamomile and Olive Organic Hand and Body Lotion (250ml) – £8 (now £6.40)
Ylang-Ylang and Neroli Relaxing Massage Oil (100ml) – £8 (now £6.40)

Ethical modelling agency seeks new faces for 2009

Flame teams up with Aveda to find real models for ethical fashion

This January 25th Flame modelling and talent agency is holding a Make up, Styling and Professional Photo Shoot at the Aveda Institute Spa in Covent Garden.

The workshop is aimed at aspiring models and will provide an opportunity to experience a real photo shoot.

Aveda’s professional make up and hair artists will make over the young women and men who will then be styled by Flame in the latest ethical fashions, followed by a professional photo shoot for their portfolios. The event will be filmed and highlights will be available to watch on the New Me TV online magazine.

Flame was set up in 2008 by Film Financing Executive, Mary Booth and Fashion Stylist, Lupe Castro, to oppose industry standards and demonstrate that real women and men can succeed as fashion models. Native New Yorker, Mary, is the creative genius behind the web TV drama Undercover Girl and has worked on several blockbuster films including, Bend It Like Beckham, Cold Mountain and Casino Royale. Lupe Castro is a fashion stylist who has worked with top designers and models and is looking to highlight the need for the fashion industry to adapt a more ethical view of modelling.

Strong ethical beliefs are at the heart of Flame with regards to the environment, from eco ways to travel to cruelty-free beauty and hair products and more. The philosophy also includes a broader range of ethnicity and age, identifying and creating opportunities for everyone. Already on their books is Leanne Nagel who rose to fame in the fourth series of Britain’s Next Top Model.

Flame also operates a strict No Size Zero Policy believing that models should be a fair and accurate representation of society today. Flame aims of change the face of modelling by giving opportunities to today’s talented young men and women to find out what it feels like to be a model and fulfil their dreams.

Come along and enjoy the experience?
Make up, Styling and Professional Photo Shoot at Aveda Institute Spa, Covent Garden, London.

The package includes a not-to-be-missed opportunity to learn more about the benefits of Aveda products, their corporate ethos, career prospects and an exclusive peek behind the scenes with a short tour of the Aveda offices to end the day with an Aveda goodie bag.

25th January 2009, 11am – 4pm (staggered arrivals)

Fee: £35

Book it now with Paypal through www.flamemodelling.com 

For any further information about the event of Flame modelling and talent agency please contact Victoria Dove at Pussycat PR on +44 (0) 7980 615 563 or victoria.dove@pussycatpr.com

Cause + Affect are having a clearance sale until the end of January with 50% off all end of line t-shirts.

This means you can now get a 100% certified fair-trade organic t-shirt, including p&p for either £7.50 or £12.50.

To take a look at the sale items just click the link below:

CAUSE + AFFECT CLEARANCE SALE

Renewable energy website makes it easy for householders to choose

People who want to make their houses as low carbon as possible will benefit from a new website which aims to bring together all the advice people need in one place.

Ignorance and not knowing where to go for information are just two of the difficulties people new to energy efficiency and renewable energy face. YouGen helps them to overcome these barriers by providing well-researched, independent information and, for those who want to go into the subject in depth, it provides links to places where they can find more detailed information.

The lively renewable energy blog adds to the range of information available, and enables both individuals and suppliers to add comments and join in and discuss issues they are interested in. YouGen Energy Experts will write regularly about their technology, answering common questions and giving practical advice.

“I noticed that there was a gap in the information available when we were renovating our house and trying to make it as low carbon as possible,” says YouGen founder Cathy Debenham. “While it was easy to find information about how the various technologies work, it was more difficult to work out which was appropriate for our house, and almost impossible to assess the claims that suppliers were making and compare the products they offered.”

YouGen aims to plug that gap. The YouGen information and blog site is now live, and develpers are now building the online community section. It will enable people to add profiles, share their experiences, ask for advice and recommend their supplier. Companies will also be able to promote their products and services with a free profile.

“When they’re looking for a plumber or a builder most people ask a friend or colleague for recommendations,” adds Cathy. “In a market as new as renewable energy, it’s often not possible to do that. With user-generated content, YouGen aims to give people the comfort of word of mouth on the web.”

It’s easy to browse the information and blog at www.yougen.co.uk. The site is constantly being updated and new developments will be added regularly, so users are recommended to register on YouGen, so they are first to hear about new functionality.

amba nature ‘Winter Sale’ extended for EJ members.

20% discount off trade prices on fair trade homeware, jewellery and accessories.

Our Winter Sale has been extended until 23rd January for EJ members.

For more details please contact us on 01702 471131 or email trade@ambanature.co.uk

Readers and visitors of Ethical Pulse can also get a 20% discount off retail prices during this time by entering the Discount Voucher Code EJWS3 in the shopping cart of our website www.ambanature.co.uk.