As a schools speaker for the Wales Fair Trade Forum and a schools assessor for the Fairtrade Foundation you might expect Sue Fisher to be enthusiastic about fair trade. 

And thanks to Meet the People Tours, her passion can even stretch to her holidays.  

Sue has previously visited India and Cuba to meet fair trade producers, and is already planning a journey to South Africa for her next Traidcraft Meet the People Tour.  

Traidcraft’s Meet the People Tours offer small groups of people a unique and authentic insight into a country’s people and culture; with a shared interest in fair trade, groups experience life in local communities, spend time with the people involved and visit development projects. As well as visiting fair trade producers, the tours give you time to enjoy and appreciate the country, see the sights and meet the people that you wouldn’t even see on a regular tourist trip.  

Despite seeing the Taj Mahal and visiting the Bay of Pigs during Meet the People tours, when we asked Sue about her favourite experiences, she told us that the unique visits to fair trade producers provided her most dearly-held memories:  

‘The thrill of seeing Carlos, the face of Fruit Passion juice, at work in Cuba, or visiting Agrocel, the home of Marks and Spencer’s Fairtrade cotton, are some of the pleasures that spring to mind. In 2007 I travelled to Western India on Traidcraft’s textiles tour and watched women embroidering skirts in their houses in Mumbai and then saw those same skirts in Traidcraft’s catalogue.  

‘But it is seeing again the empowerment of local workers, particularly women, that remains the most exciting aspect of these visits. Recently I saw this process taking place in Kerala when I visited the Peermade Tea Factory, source of Equal Exchange’s Fairtrade organic tea, and some of its workers during Traidcraft’s South India tour.  

The whole idea of fair trade potentially touches on some quite serious issues, but Sue found the holidays a truly uplifting experience.

‘I find that a lot of laughter is heard on these visits to producer groups. Often this is hard to describe, as it is non-verbal, like workers’ reactions to our efforts to eat with our hands in village houses or to pick the ‘two leaves and a bud’ of quality tea in a clean break.’  

‘Sometimes it arises from the generous hospitality of our hosts, as in a lunch with a farmers’co-operative in Cuba, when we realised that the bottles on the tables were rum – one bottle for every two visitors! We didn’t do it justice!’  

You can find out more about Meet the People tours at www.traidcraft-tours.com, call Lizzie or Paul on 0191 2651110 or email traidcraft@skedaddle.co.uk.

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