World Fair Trade Day 2010

World Fair Trade Day, to me, was hectic. The day started off bright and early with Pierpaolo and me setting up the stall at Edinburgh Zoo.

We had chocolates, bananas, candy bars, biscuits and such to hand out, but of course we had to taste it before we could hand out anything!

It was an amazing day full of surprises. The first surprise was my mother turning up at the event. This was the first event I organised, so she flew over from Belgium, just for the day.

Of course I put her to work straight away. She knew all there was to know about Fair Trade in Scotland and got enlisted as one of the volunteers for the day.

I was running through the Zoo, getting our amazing band all set up.

Due to the mating pattern of the birds in the Zoo, we needed to relocate the performance by Clanadonia to the main entrance. This turned out to be a huge success; we were able to hand out flyers and sugar sticks to all the passers-by.

Clanadonia was amazing, they were impressive and loud, just what you need to gather a big crowd.

Back at the stall at Budongo Trail, the volunteers weren’t getting any rest either, with several groups of girl scouts visiting the Zoo that day, we were happy we had enough chocolate, bananas and biscuits.

The drawing contest we organised at Budongo Trail was a hit as well, children entered in order to get a Fair Trade football and chocolate. And we ended up with some amazing drawings.

The only set-back at the drawing contest was the entry from Sarah (SFTF employee), who drew a Fair Trade tea field, sadly was not rewarded. All children however received a price for their artwork.

At 2.15 most of our volunteers were present at the Penguin Parade, where we overwhelmed the crowd with a huge cheer when we got mentioned by the zookeepers. Once again we got a chance to hand out flyers, sugar sticks and bananas.

We had reinforcement from the youngest of Fairtraders, bravely handing out bananas to passers-by. And serious as they were about their job, they made sure everyone who got a banana got the message that these were not to be shown at the chimpanzees. The zookeepers are using positive reinforcement training to get the chimpanzees to show their hands and feet, they get a banana as a reward every time they get it right. So if the chimpanzees would see the bananas, they would start doing tricks and get upset for not being rewarded.

We got the message out loud and clear, not too many people got home that evening without having noticed 8^th May was World Fair Trade Day.

So we got to go home, exhausted but satisfied by the great day World Fair Trade Day was.