Customer News
Cards from Africa – in Welsh!
Fair trade shop, Fairdo’s, in Cardiff has recently started to sell fair trade cards with Welsh language greetings. The cards, made by Cards from Africa, in Rwanda are a first for both Fairdo’s as the first Welsh language cards made for them by a company based in the ‘South’, it is also a first for [...]
Customer Focus – Dukunde Kawa Cooperative (MUSASA)
MUSASA was founded in 2000 with 300 founder members and was legally incorporated in 2002. The cooperative is located in Ruli sector of Rushashi district and cultivates its high quality coffee near a mountain gorilla habitat of central Rwanda. In 2003, Musasa cooperative built a washing station in Rushashi district with the help of a [...]
Tony Blair visits Palestinian Success Story
Jenin, Palestine. November 19, 2009. Tony Blair, the economic representative of the Quartet, visited Canaan Fair Trade in the village of Burqin and pronounced it a showpiece of Palestinian economic development. Mr. Blair toured Canaan’s new $2.5 million facility on Tuesday, November 10. Canaan Director Nasser Abufarha met with the Blair delegation and presented the plant and products.
Customer Focus Zaytoun
Zaytoun became a customer of Shared Interest in 2008. Zaytoun is a community interest company established in 2004 to support marginalized farming communities in Palestine.
Customer Focus Equal Exchange Inc
We have been working together with Equal Exchange, Inc since 1995. The facility we operate with EEI is a unique one. They operate a buyer line of credit for their fair trade purchases and also guarantee a line of credit for producers who either do not have access to a Shared Interest account or do not have enough credit available on their own line.
Crossing Cultures and Realising Dreams
Wow – what a start to our trip!
After arriving in Nairobi with Margaret, my colleague at Shared Interest, we were keen to start our visits and meet some of the fair trade businesses we lend to from our head office back in Newcastle.
Rachel, who heads up our Kenyan office, picked us up on the first [...]
Fairtrade Customer Spotlight – Cocagi Coffee Cooperative
Another coffee co-operative in Rwanda, the third in nine months, has started to use Shared Interest’s export credit facilities, a demonstration of Shared Interest’s growing reputation in that country.
COCAGI is located in the Gishoma district of western Rwanda (the name stands for Co-operative des caféculteurs de Gishoma). It started with just 22 members in 2003 [...]
Fair Trade Business in Zimbabwe Struggling for Survival
Try to imagine you are running a business and one morning you wake up to discover that the government has declared your national currency as worthless and therefore has withdrawn it from circulation and adopted the US dollar.
Your bank account with trillions of the local currency is non-functional overnight and even if you had a [...]
Palestinian Fairtrade Olive Oil Now in Sainsbury’s!
It seems as though the good news surrounding Canaan Fair Trade, the Palestinian cooperative that produces the world’s only Fairtrade certified olive oil, just keeps on getting better.
It was announced in Saturday’s Telegraph that Sainsbury’s will start selling Canaan’s extra-virgin olive oil Equal Exchange branded extra virgin olive oil (bottled and processed by Canaan Fair [...]
Kenya Fairtrade here we come! Ian and Shelagh are packed and ready to go.
Ian and Shelagh are Shared Interest ambassadors and the views in this post are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Shared Interest Society.
Well, we’re all packed and ready to go. It’s surprising how much you can get in a middling sized rucksack, though we’re both glad we don’t plan on any [...]