Malawi Exhibition and Trade Event

Wednesday 3 November 2010
10.30 - 4.30
Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh

Admission free - Open to everyone

• members of the public, trade buyers, Fairtrade groups, etc
• join us for a day out to Malawi

Among the products on display will be Teas and Coffee, Rice and Lentils, Ground Nuts and Pulses, exquisite wood carvings, quality hand-crafted pottery and clothing. The event will also feature Malawi as a travel destination and artist David Kelly will be exhibiting his internationally acclaimed paintings.

Come and meet the producers from Malawi who have flown in especially for this event. Hear how their products are grown and manufactured and how trade between Scotland and Malawi is benefitting people, communities and business in both countries.

↓ Download your invite | View the poster →

For more details contact
Imani Development, Oban
01631 569990
email: imani@tradeconnections.org

Multicultural Day, Prestongrange Museum

On Sunday 10th October, two of our volunteers manned a stall at Prestongrange Museum's Multi-Cultural Day.

Our marquee neighbours were the Edinburgh Chinese Culture Association, and East Coast FM.  It was really nice to meet our fellow Fair-Traders from The Green Gift Company and the One World Shop. 


We would like to attend more of these type of events.  It's a learning curve and notes for next time include:

• A 'bag of tricks' including hooks, sellotape, scissors is very handy.
• Take a flask of Traidcraft hot chocolate and a geobar or two.
• Taking orders (on a pay on collection basis) for higher priced items worked well.
• We need to think of ways to utilise the space around us (i.e. not just the table)
• The things with very obvious price signage sold well - people don't like picking things up to see price.
• People are genuinely interested in the origin of craft items - it pays to know about your stock and have some producer info

The Multi-Cultural Day was very well organised and widely publicised thanks to the efforts of East Lothian Museums Service.  We met potential customers, networked and learned a few things.  We were so glad to have been part of it!

Questionnaire Feedback

Last month we asked you to complete a questionnaire in a bid to get to know you better.  Thank you very much for taking the time to do this. Here are the results:

One fifth of respondents either hadn't visited the shop recently (or at all). Reasons for this included not knowing what type of products were sold in the shop and inconvenient opening times.

Food and drink accounted for the majority of purchases made, followed by gifts and jewellery.

Half of the respondents said they rarely bought toiletries or homewares (perhaps they didn't know about our fab refill service?).

80% of respondents said they would buy cruelty-free products and 60% expressed an interest in vegetarian or vegan food.

50% of respondents were interested in ordering by email.

40% were likely to use gift vouchers.

30% said they might use a gift wrapping service.

No-one expressed an interest in a discount scheme on large (non-food) orders (although a suggestion was made to introduce a 'loyalty' scheme).

There was no interest in a paid for delivery service

Ideally, customers would prefer to be able to shop Saturday afternoon or Sunday

Respondents like the idea of events in the shop (talks, tastings, exhibitions etc) with a Musical Evening and a  Family Day being the most popular (with 70% saying either 'yes' or 'maybe').

Suggestions included:

• serving tea and coffee in the shop,
• having themed (e.g. Indian) evenings
• more coffee mornings

One respondent kindly offered transport to/from the shop for social events.  This kind of help is always very much appreciated!

The winner of the prize draw , chosen by a random number generator, was Mrs Jane Hepburn.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the questionnaire. We are now reviewing the feedback and hope to be able to introduce some new products and services shortly.

Chocolate Week: 11-17 October - a recipe

Chocolate biscuit bars

With chocolate, brazil nuts and fruit, these bars are irresistible.

Ingredients

• 8oz/200g Traidcraft brazil nut cookies
• 4oz/100g margarine
• 4oz/100g Traidcraft raisins and sultanas
• 1oz/25g Traidcraft muscovado sugar
• 2oz/50g syrup
• 1oz/25g Traidcraft cocoa powder
• 4oz/100g Traidcraft chocolate for covering

Method

1. Crush the biscuits.
2. Melt the margarine in a pan, then mix in the syrup, sugar and cocoa powder.
3. Take the pan off the heat and add biscuits and dried fruit.
4. Press the mixture into an 8" (20cm) sandwich tin or baking tray.
5. Break the chocolate into a basin. Stand a small basin in a large one filled with some hot water to melt it.
6. Spread the chocolate over the biscuit mixture.
7. Put in fridge to cool.
8. Cut into slices.

(Recipe is one of several available at the Traidcraft website).

The Grand Re-Launch

In 1986, Carol Morton, wife of Colin Morton, the then minister of Prestongrange Parish Church, set up The Small World in a room in the former Council wages office in Prestonpans.

These days, Carol is kept busy at Palcrafts/Hadeel (an Edinburgh-based organisation selling crafts from community-based groups in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon).  We were delighted she was able to return to the shop yesterday to celebrate it's grand re-launch at a select gathering which included Iain Gray MSP, former volunteers and representatives of local organisations.  



The shop received its first makeover in over 20 years thanks to donations from Prestonpans Community Council, B&Q and an anonymous donor.   


Whether you are a regular customer, infrequent visitor or have never been before, we warmly welcome you to join us for some fair trade refreshments (and facepainting!) at our Open Day this Saturday, 11th September from 10 until 3.

Proud Distributors of the Kitchen Canny!

Canny [‘kani] adj 1 careful, prudent, astute la16-. 2 skilful, dextrous 19-. 3 frugal, sparing 19-: ‘be canny wi the butter’

Go to Ac

Kitchen Canny is a brand new Changeworks project that aims to help householders find practical ways to reduce their food waste.

Changeworks is working with four thousand people in communities across the Lothian and Borders area to find out what works when it comes to cutting down the amount of edible food we throw away.


Every kitchen is different.  They want to help you figure out what works best for you and the way you run your kitchen. You may already know a lot of the things you could be doing but may not have found the time to try them out.  The Kitchen Canny Householder Action Kit aims to encourage you to find the time and guide you through some ideas that might fit.

Here's why we think it's important:
It's better for your pocket
According to recent research, Scottish households wastw £1 billion of food each year  -that's £430 per household. The cost of collecting all that food waste is £85 million a year (The Food We Waste in Scotland, WRAP 2009
It's better for the environment
Producing, transporting and storing food uses huge amounts of energy, water and packaging. When you waste food, you waste all of these resources too
That's not all. The majority of food waste ends up in landfill sites where it decomposes and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas
It's better for people
1 billion people of going hungry according to the World Food Programme, with 1 in 5 not getting enough food to be healthy.

You can pick up your FREE Kitchen Canny Kit at The Small World Shop from Tuesday 7th September while stocks last.

We want to get to know you better!

We are really keen to have your views on the type of products you would like us to stock and whether we could be doing more to help you.

For example, would a delivery service be of interest to you?  Are our opening hours convenient for you?

Please let us know by completing our customer survey.

We know form-filling is no-one's favourite pastime so we have designed the questionnaire to be as painless as possible and, as an extra incentive, completed questionnaires will be added to a prize draw to win a £10 Small World gift voucher.

You can either pick up a questionnaire in the shop or download a pdf version here.  Entries can be handed in or posted to us (by 30th September please).