Fairtrade Fortnight event - Broad Street shop 28 Feb

Fairtrade Fortnight (23 February to 8 March) is just around the corner and the Oxfam shop in Broad Street needs extra helpers to work on a stall outside the shop on Saturday 28th February. You would be getting passers-by to taste Fairtrade tea, coffee and other goodies, and also selling Fairtrade goods. Please contact Rachel at volunteer@oxfordoxfamgroup.org.uk if you are able to help.

We have been doing events like this for over a decade, back when Fairtrade was pretty niche - they are usually a lot of fun, as well as being a good way to spread information about Fairtrade. Among our exploits of yesteryear, we organized a "Mad Hatter's Tea Party" for the UK launch of TeaDirect. It somewhat bemused two delegates visiting from the co-operatives producing the tea (it seems that Lewis Caroll is not so big in their part of Uganda). Given the mismatch between my 6'2" frame and the brown plush dormouse costume we had, I am glad that Naveed probably has no photos (though do check the comments box, in case he has!).

More seriously it was very interesting to hear first-hand what Fairtrade could do - their first projects for their Fairtrade premium were to expand the medical facilities they had at their dispensary, and to build a bridge. Without the bridge, some farmers had to trudge for miles on foot with sacks of tea on their backs to get their crop to the co-operative's processing plant. That's the kind of thing buying Fairtrade achieves.

Don't worry - as far as I know, the upcoming event is not fancy dress.

Oxford Book of Soups and Stews - call for recipies

Cyril Edwards has asked me to post this about another fundraising project!

Well, I have no academic book coming out this year, so thought I'd go, in the autumn, for my first cookbook (and also my first self-published book). It's a collaborative effort – I'm just the editor and compiler (and one of the 4 central cooks). Naveed is another. The book will be 128pp, beautifully illustrated, ring-bound and on acid-free paper. Guest recipes have been coming in from far and wide, but no doubt OOG people could offer me more. There will be 3 sections: vegetable; fish; meat, poultry and game. Family recipes are ideal, exotic recipes very welcome, and acknowledgements should be scrupulously made, preferably with an anecdote. So please send me your recipes, preferably by e-mail: volunteer@oxfordoxfamgroup.org.uk

The last date for submission of recipes is April Fools' Day, 2009.

I would welcome help with marketing. Local shops here in Abingdon have been very encouraging. The problem with selling books through Oxfam shops is the splitting of the profits. Oxfam is curiously reluctant about such matters, far too rigid. They shouldn't be. I'm quite happy for half the profits to go to Oxfam, but I would like, in an ideal world, to cover my costs. Laserset in Abingdon will be doing the printing. I estimate the book will cost £6.99 or £7.99.

Oxford Oxfam Group Sponsored Walk

Cyril Edwards, who is organising the walk, asked me to post the following:

As you may recall, we do a sponsored walk every two years. Despite the low number of walkers, the 2008 Shotover walk was a success financially, and it was extraordinarily beautiful.

This year the plan is to start from our Lake Street base, walk to North Hinksey, then across country to Osney, then along the Thames Path to Port Meadow's south side. Thence to Binsey, with a detour to the lovely church, then on to Godstow, and back via Woodcote and the Trap Grounds, returning along the canal path, now so sadly disfigured by new housing developments. Given the weather, I've not yet done the pre-walking, but hope to do so soon. Anyone wishing to join me for the pre-walking is most welcome, if there's a bright day soon contact us on volunteer@oxfordoxfamgroup.org.uk. I'll take my non-digital camera, so the basis for a poster, on past experience, should develop. I'll also write a guide, with a map, and I hope that Oxfam House will print it, as they have done before.

Distance: perhaps 10 miles. Rather shorter than our usual walks, but anno domini!

Provisional date: Saturday May 30th.

What do I ask of OOG?

(i) Cardboard signs. We lost a lot on the last walk, and I've very few left (dating from the Greens). They should be strips of cardboard, with 2 holes, strung, and pointing either right and left, with OOG inscribed upon them. No elaborate artwork necessary, unless you feel so inclined!

(ii) Publicity: Claire Abolins and Rachel Iliffe have been great about this, but we still haven't had many walkers for the last 2 walks (Shotover and the Canal Walk).

(iii) (Wo)manning the reception area. Lake Street must be (wo)manned from 10.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. It need only be one person. There are so many great pubs on this walk (or pub crawl, if you prefer!) that I would not expect many people to get back before 2.00, but walkers feel let down if there is not a warm welcome, and, at very least, a cup of tea. The atmosphere after the return of walkers in 2008, was frankly, wonderful and joyous, and we must try to rescue the photos lots of people took then.

(iv) Most importantly: we need walkers! Despite our best efforts at publicity, the numbers of walkers for the last two lovely walks were low, and this inevitably affects sponsorship negatively. Back in the 90s, we often had mothers walking with prams, and the Port Meadow walk will be, for the most part, flat and not physically demanding at all. (Unless there are floods!) We have, somehow, to make this more of an event with lots of people participating. I'll circulate details in the University, but it doesn't, generally, work well. Ideas, please!

Can you help with any of the above? Contact us on volunteer@oxfordoxfamgroup.org.uk [It would help us if you gave your email the title "Walk"]

In Focus photo project

My colleague Rebecca at Oxfam House has asked me to advertise her photo project aimed at getting 11-14 year olds in Oxfordshire to think about what they'd like to protect from climate change.

The Green Finger project asks children to colour in their index finger in green pen and write on their palm what they want to protect, and then take a photo or video with their palm and Green Finger facing the camera, like this:














Or this:



When children enter In Focus, they join people from all over the world who are telling world leaders and people everywhere to take action and protect the world from climate change, which affects poorest people the worst.

The deadline for entries by Monday 23 March. The best entries will win great prizes! Up for grabs are a Sony Cybershot T77 camera, a Flip Video Mino and digital photo frames. So if you have kids in this age range, or have links with a local school, do let them know about it.

Oxfam Activist News

Read all about it. You can download the latest issue of Activist News (opens as a PDF file) here. Activist News is a monthly newsletter for Oxfam supporters.

Oxford Oxfam Group Sponsored Walk 2009

Plans are getting underway for an OOG sponsored walk this summer. The date is provisionally 30th May. Previous walks have been both a lot of fun and a good fund-raiser for Oxfam. Probably this one will be a circular walk around the Port Meadow area in Oxford. As for previous walks, Cyril Edwards is planning to produce an interesting walk booklet - history and natural history as well as directions. It would not be an OOG walk without there being several good pubs en route.

Watch this space! Come March, both walkers and helpers will be wanted.

Oxford recertified as a Fairtrade City

Good news! Oxford has been recertified as a Fairtrade City in time for Fairtrade Fortnight. This is a process which has to be undergone regularly, and the Oxford Fairtrade Coalition has been working hard to ensure that we still meet or exceed the criteria - which we do! The Coalition, like us, has gone blog-crazy, and you can find details of what's going on during Fairtrade Fortnight on the new site.

In particular, there will be an event on 23 February from 7 till 9pm at Oxford Town Hall to discuss the motion ‘Is trade justice a lost cause?’. Speakers will include Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation; John Hilary, Director of War on Want; Fiona Shera, Head of Trade and Development, DFID-BERR; and Edwin Laurent, Former Special Envoy to the EU for the Windward Islands.

This year, the Fairtrade Foundation are asking us to go bananas,and take part in a world record attempt on the biggest mass-banana-consumption event in history (words I would not have anticipated ever having to write). If like me, you think bananas are there to be laughed at and not eaten, then you may be interested in my Fairtrade banana video:



Or then again, you may not.

Book Fair

Hello everyone

You may have heard by now that the date of our book fair has changed to Saturday 4th April 2009. I hope many of you will be able to come along and help on the day with placarding, working on the till, and generally being a welcome extra pair of hands. Please comment on this blog or contact me if you can help.

We also need good-quality books to sell! If you feel like you need a good old clear-out, we'd be really grateful if you could donate your books to us. Any subject will do - academic, children's, fiction or general non-fiction will all be put to good use. We can collect them if necessary, or they can be brought straight to our sorting room at Lake Street Community centre. If you have a car and can help with collections and driving books around, please also get in touch via this blog.

We also need help with publicity - tell all your friends about the fair, and when you get your poster/s please stick them up where lots of people can see them! 

If you want to be more involved in the running of the fair, you could join us in our sorting and pricing sessions at Lake Street (off Abingdon Road). We can give directions if anyone is interested in helping with this. No experience necessary!

Finally, one of the trickiest things about the fair is getting enough people to help shift books to and from the fair on the Friday and Saturday evenings. If you can help with this please get in touch as the more helpers we have, the quicker and easier it is.

Many thanks!

Rachel

Oxford Forum for International Development

Wow, my first ever blog post!

Oxford Hub has just asked me to promote their annual conference, the Oxford Forum for International Development (OxFID) 2009, on February 7th and 8th in the Said Business School. It's priced at £14 for the whole conference weekend (including two lunches), and they welcome participants from all disciplines and levels of experience, both students and non-students. You can find out more and book on the Oxford Hub website. The theme of the conference will be "Creative Solutions to Urgent Problems". They say it like this:

"The world is approaching a crisis point. Run-away climate change and the global food crisis will continue to be exacerbated as population expands to over 9 billion people by the year 2050. A global financial crisis is reshaping the way the world's economy works. Epidemics of infectious diseases are spreading throughout the world and fresh water supplies are under threat. Slow change is no longer acceptable, urgent action is needed. OxFID 2009 aims to investigate fully the impact of all these factors on developing nations and to bring together some of the world's leading academics, creative thinkers, and NGOs to encourage debate and precipitate solutions."

People who went last year spoke very highly of it. This year's speakers include:

• Dr Andrew Steer, Director of General Policy and Research at DFID
• Aubrey Meyer, Director of the Global Commons Institute and listed by the New Statesman as 'one of the 10 people most likely to save the world'
• Dr Kevin Watkins, Director of the UN Human Development Report Agency
• Lord Robert May, former President of the Royal Society former Chief Scientist to DFID and the U.K. Government
• Benedict Southworth, Director of the World Development Movement
• Robert Annibale, Global Director of Citigroup microfinance
• John Hillary, Director of War on Want
• Oliver Cumming, Head of Policy at Wateraid
• Sam Bickerseth, Head of Programme Policy at Oxfam
• Professor David Rogers, University of Oxford, and advisor to the E.U. on climate change and infectious diseases

There you go, I've done it!

DEC Gaza appeal

A territory is under blockade and its people are suffering. There is war, and getting help to the suffering will be a challenge. Any humanitarian effort might be exploited by one or both of the combatants.
I'm talking about 1942 when a remarkable group of people met in Oxford. They wished to try help civilians in Greece who were suffering as a result of the Allied blockade. (Greece was at that time being occupied by the Axis powers, 1942 being at the height of World War Two.) Allied policy at the time was that the Axis Powers could jolly well be responsible for feeding the peoples they had conquered. And if they failed, the suffering civilians were perhaps more likely to be sympathetic to the Allied cause. Further, there were obvious risks that the Axis Powers would exploit any relief effort - e.g. distribute the aid to their troops, or only to collaborators. Despite these problems, the Oxford committee was eventually able to arrange for relief to cross the blockade and be distributed successfully. The small committee went on to become Oxfam.

The reason for this history lesson is that I'm still trying to understand the BBC's position on not co-operating with the DEC appeal for Gaza. Their position (statement from the BBC Director General here) boils down to two issues:

1. they can't broadcast the appeal without seeming to take sides
2. they don't believe that the DEC will manage to get the aid through

That is, they are raising just the points that the fledgling Oxfam had to deal with in 1942. And of course it is a recurring theme. Most big crises have some sort of human contribution. Whether there is direct violence (DEC appeals for Darfur, or Kosovo) or whether there is a natural disaster exacerbated by human failings (e.g. Zimbabwe, Burma Cyclone Appeal). After so long It's odd to still be arguing about whether you can "just help these people" and bypass- for that purpose at least - the question of whose fault it all is. That might be well worth asking, but in order to save people's lives that might have to be a separate conversation.

The second point was whether humanitarian aid can actually be delivered. Obviously that is a concern. The DEC, basically says "trust us":

"The DEC launches joint appeals when three criteria are met: overwhelming
humanitarian need, ability by DEC members and their partners to respond and
evidence that the UK public want to help. The Trustees judge that these criteria
are met and are confident that that joint action by DEC Member Agencies is the
best course of action in this crisis."(http://www.dec.org.uk/item/322/248/0/0)

(If you are interested in how the DEC plans to ensure money donated to the appeal is well spent, then the DEC's FAQ page has plenty to read.)

Clearly, there is a role for journalists to investigate whether humanitarian organizations actually do deliver what they promised. I haven't yet seen (and don't expect to see) the BBC or any other news organization exposing the DEC as being unable to deliver the aid it has promised. It seems odd (to say the least) for the BBC to pre-empt such a conclusion by managerial decision.

Far from helping the BBC to remain impartial, the whole sad affair seems only to be helping the lunatic fringe of zionist conspiracy theorists (who of course have never thought the BBC impartial, anyway because conspiracy theorists know that everything is a consipracy).

By the way, the DEC say that the Gaza appeal raised £3,000,000 in the first week. That donation link again: http://www.dec.org.uk/donate_now/