As part of Fairtrade Fortnight that ran from 23 February to 8 March there were a number of activities that took place at both our Chelmsford and Cambridge campus to promote Fairtrade to both staff, students and visitors.

At our Cambridge campus there were stalls with representatives from Oxfam, the World Development Movement and Wombat which is a store recently opened selling Fairtrade clothing. At our Chelmsford campus a staff v student football match was held, pancakes with Fairtrade ingredients were dished at the Chaplaincy and a talk on trade was held by the Business School. There were stalls with representatives from Community Development, Chelmsford Star Co-op and Chelmsford Fairtrade Town Campaign Group (CFTCG) with Fairtrade tasting's, raffle and lots of information on Fairtrade was given out.

To end the fortnight of activities Anglia Ruskin took part in the Big Banana Challenge! This involved giving out 200 Fairtrade bananas at each campus kindly donated by the Co-operative in an attempt to break the world's biggest Fairtrade banana eating record! Malcolm Wallace from CFTCG kicked off the Chelmsford event by thanking our University for all the work it is doing to promote Fairtrade and went on to highlight some of the achievements of the local group. Overall 419,024 people went bananas and ate a fairtrade banana between 12.00pm on 6 March to 12.00pm on 7 March.

The whole fortnight was a success and the Community Development team raised £252 with £102 for Mission Croatia and £150 for the Mill Road winter fair through the sale of the raffle tickets.

The whole event was a fantastic team effort involving Sports Development, Community Development, Ashcroft International Business School, the Chaplaincy, Catering Services and the external organisations who were involved so a big thank you to everyone for taking part in promoting such an important area of work.

Fairtrade can be supported by buying Fairtrade items wherever you see the Fairtrade mark and for more information see the following links:

Chelmsford Fairtrade Town Group: www.chelmsfordfairtrade.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
Fairtrade Foundation: www.fairtrade.org.uk