Foundation Summary from our Annual General Meeting

Posted by Andrea Shared Interest Foundation

March 23, 2009

For those of you who weren’t able to make it to our Annual General Meeting took place in York on Saturday, I thought you might appreciate a brief run down on what we have achieved in the Foundation over the last year and what new and exciting projects we are looking to set up this year.

The Foundation had a successful year both in terms of income and delivery. We received over £127,000 (individual donations, trust and grant giving bodies, and gift aid) and were thrilled to receive news that the Big Lottery Fund had agreed to fund our three-year producer support project in Rwanda, awarding us with almost quarter of a million pounds over three years.

This support has enabled the Foundation to train 167 producer groups and over 250 people in 7 countries this year alone and over the 4 years the Foundation has been active we have trained 40% of all WFTO (formerly known as IFAT) registered businesses throughout Africa,

We have also awarded a total of £5,000 in grants and have been developing plans to introduce a livelihood security fund to complement this capacity building work. In other areas, we continued to work in support of the wider Fairtrade movement and launched a Foundation newsletter to keep you informed about our activities.