ABOUT US
What do we do?
Selling We sell a wide range of fairly traded, high quality, unusual, foods, hampers, gifts, clothes & cards.
Events We host our own Fashion Show in Spring and Preview in Autumn and have stalls at many other events, including one at the lovely Oakham Castle.
Collection point We are a collection point for Store House (a food bank plus) & a delivery point for Christmas Gift Shoeboxes.
Melton Mowbray Fairtrade Borough group 3 of the 4 of us are on the Melton Mowbray Fairtrade Borough committee.
Who are we?
We have over 50 volunteers, who do regular or occasional sessions at the shop, check, price & display goods, stock count, clean, supply village shops, help at events and many other things.
Four very keen fair trade supporters oversee the business:
Polly covers anything financial & probably has the most headaches.
Karen buys all the food & makes beautiful hampers.
Helen, who has a good eye for fashion, buys all the clothes & cards & oversees window dressing, very often doing this herself.
Dolores who recently stepped down as a Director and continues to volunteer in the shop. Did the rota for 15 years, this job is now equitably distributed, what a relief!
And we must mention Lynn who was with us for 14 years (finances & food buying) until she left to go to university and remains a great supporter of the shop.
Other benefits of volunteering here: some good friendships have built up between our volunteers, we have seen some volunteers blossom & go onto paid jobs, we have met many people in our town & at events and of course many other fair traders.
How we began
Some of us in Melton Mowbray had been involved in the Jubilee 2000, Make Poverty History & Trade Campaigns and felt passionately about extreme poverty of exploited people in poor countries. In 2005 St Mary’s Church opened it’s new centre & had a small room, 12 ‘ square, with a shop window to rent, which was quickly spotted by Sue. She called four of us and after talking at some Lent Groups & signing up some other helpers, we opened an entirely voluntary fair trade shop in (a rather pressurised) 3 weeks, with a DIY business starter pack from a newsagents. We didn’t have business experience, so there was a lot to learn.
Between the Lent groups and ourselves we raised £4,000, which was enough to stock the shop & pay for the many things that are involved in starting a shop. As space was tight our houses were overrun with things fair-trade. Fortunately we all had patient & supportive partners. After 6 years we decided to move and unlikely as it seems we moved next door to a lovely old, bigger shop, without one flat surface, but we had a storeroom/office, which made things much better. Many volunteers have come & gone (& returned) and the vast majority tell us they love helping here.
What about the money?
The Fairtrading Post is a not-for-profit fair trade retail business and is run entirely by volunteers. Profits are put back into the business or donated to related charities, such us Traidcraft Exchange, Fairtrade Foundation, Water Aid, emergency disaster appeals & smaller amounts to local charities.