A woman who was in at the very start of the Fair Trade movement in Keswick has decided to retire from the committee.
Sheila Tolley was part of an early Fair Trade group in the town which raised money for a water project in Peru along with Bob Bryden and the late Ian Boyd.
From this initiative, Keswick and District Fair Trade Campaign was born in 2003, started by these three and Joe Human, who had just moved to the town.
Sheila has remained an active member of the campaign committee ever since and is valued for her strong roots in the community and her good judgment.
Now in her 90s, she has decided to step away from the committee but remains as committed as ever to the work of Fairtrade and Trade Justice throughout the world.
“I was very happy to be involved in the Fair Trade Campaign,’’ said Sheila. “The work it does buying products from poorer farmers in the world and giving them support is very important to me.”
Mr Human, one of those who help form the Keswick and District Fair Trade Campaign, said: “Sheila was always a very respected member of our campaign.
“She brought an invaluable local perspective, most especially in the early days when we were finding our feet within the community. Our success owed a great deal to her perspective.’’
Through the activities of the campaign, Keswick achieved Fairtrade Town status in 2006 – one of the earliest in the country to do so.
And the campaign played a key role in establishing Cumbria Fair Trade Network, which consists of 22 groups around the county all committed to campaigning in their local communities. This network is still going, 19 years after it was formed.
The campaign group also formed a friendship link with a Fairtrade certified coffee farming community in Ethiopia.
“This became very important to us in our campaigning work, most especially after two coffee farmers from the community visited Keswick in 2008,’’ said Mr Human. “For them, the value of the friendship really blossomed after Keswick Rotary became involved in the link.
“Rotary put money into the community for a massively successful savings and loan scheme, that has become a model project in the Rotary world, drawing much admiration.’’
Locally, the campaign was very successful in raising awareness in, and getting commitment from the community including most churches, the schools and the Theatre by the Lake. It also got the accommodation sector signed-up to Fairtrade.
“As I used to say: ‘It’s not so much the beds we’re interested in but the breakfasts – the tea and the coffee and the sugar’,’’ said Mr Human. “And many of the B&Bs which signed up at the start are still with us.”
