Minster School’s cookery demo evening will promote Fairtrade

A cookery demonstration using fair-trade ingredients will be just one of the attractions at the Minster School in Southwell on Tuesday 3rd March 2009 at 7pm, for a special evening marking Fairtrade Fortnight.

The town Fairtrade Group and the Minster school are teaming up again this year to put on the evening, when the doors of the school will be opened and its main foyer and hall turned into a market place with banners, balloons and stalls for Fairtrade clothing, craftwork and food.

One of the organiser, retired Bishop, the Rt Revd Ronald Milner, said: “The theme of the evening will be a ‘Taste of Fairtrade’ and the emphasis will be on tasting a wide variety of Fairtrade produce and seeing demonstrations of cookery using Fairtrade ingredients. We hope to have a packed evening, which will help people see the huge variety and quality of Fairtrade products now available.”

Tickets will cost £3, available from Turnaround in King Street, Southwell. Minster School pupils from the school’s cookery department have been baking muffins using Fairtrade ingredients from a special Minster school recipe and these will be available for tasting during the evening. There will also be a video on the big screen in the main hall showing the young cooks at work!

In addition Fiona Murphy from Tuxford will demonstrate her recipe which won a place in the new ‘Fairtrade Everyday Cookbook’ after a national competition for Fairtrade recipes - the book will also be on sale.

Bishop Ronald said: “All in all with a film showing Fairtrade producers at work in Africa and other developing countries it promises to be a good, tasty night out!”

The Southwell Fairtrade evening will be one of over 12,000 UK events to mark Fairtrade Fortnight which starts on February 23rd. The theme of the fortnight will be ‘Make it happen:choose Fairtrade’. This urgent call comes in the first Fairtrade Fortnight since the publication of a new five year Fairtrade strategy ‘Tipping the Balance’, which aims to expand the Movement to benefit developing country producers. One of the five aims is to multiply by four the amount of Fairtrade produce sold in the UK, bring the total to £2 billion a year by 2012. Already seven out of ten households in the UK buy Fairtrade providing a market which globally helps over 7 million small farmers, producers and their families in 58 of the poorest countries in the world. Southwell’s ‘Taste of Fairtrade’ evening on March 3rd will bring together town, school and for the first time this year, Brackenhurst College, to spread the Fairtrade message and create a bigger market for producers in those countries where many people are struggling to live on less than $2 a day!

Ends