Community
It is great news that many schools in the Bristol area have become Fairtrade schools. This means they use Fairtrade products as much as possible and they teach their students about global trade and why Fairtrade is important. Fairtrade is also an important initiative to Bart Spices, and we aim to swap our conventional products to Fairtrade products where possible.
To support local schools, Bart has recently started visiting Fairtrade schools to talk to the students about our partnerships with farmers in India and Sri Lanka.
Bart’s chairman gives talks about our business and products to local interest groups. The donations from these groups are given to a local charity that we support for 1 year. At the moment we are supporting Hartcliffe Children’s Centre.
We also make smaller donations of £25 per time to other charities. This money is made from selling our products to staff at a discounted price. In 2008 we made over 30 donations.
Bart supports local community kitchens – Filwood, Withywood and recently Hartcliffe.
Community Kitchens are for the local communities to get involved in cooking. Children and adults learn how to make their own dishes as well as achieve a “Food Hygiene” certificate. The focus of these initiatives is to promote healthy eating in the area. Bart donates ingredients and aprons to the kitchens.
At the Horfield Community Festival and Feast 2009, the Community Cookbook was launched. Bart sponsored this book.
In 2008 we also supported the Totterdown Community Cookbook by donating recipes and pictures.
Bart likes to support various local events and open days, from large events to smaller ones. For example we exhibit at the Bristol Organic Food Festival, we donated ingredients to the Avonmouth Food Day, where they had a demonstration kitchen. We attended Jekka Herb Farm Open Day, which promotes organic herbs.
Since 2007 Bart has sponsored the recycling at the Bristol Organic Food Festival. We enable this local event to have recycling points and employees to clear the rubbish left by exhibitors and visitors. It also encourages people to think about the link between their purchases and the environmental health.
We also attended a number of smaller open days such as Women’s Institute International Day and a local school food day. We provided leaflets and products at the Horfield Community Festival and Feast.
Bart has sponsored the roundabout at the end of York Road, Bristol for 5 years. The roundabout is planted with flowers by Bristol in Bloom, which is a community association initiative supported by the council.
Penny Brohn is a Bristol based charity which offers complimentary and nutritional advice to people with cancer. Bart is the sponsor of the Penny Brohn Food Chain, which is about enjoying food while raising money. The idea is to hold a dinner party where all the guests donate some money. Those guests then hold their own dinner parties to raise money etc. As well as sponsoring this initiative we also distribute leaflets to help promote it.
Bart has also signed up to the May Day Network where we made a pledge to measure and report our carbon emissions and continue to implement new policies to reduce our carbon footprint.
In 2007 our partner farmer in Peru was hit by a massive Earthquake. This farm provided work and home to many of the local people, so Bart donated the proceeds of the 2007 Chilli Fiesta to the reconstruction programme.
The Scientific Exploration Society brings together civilian and service explorers on scientific and community aid projects world wide. Bart has supported this charity for a number of years by donating a selection of ingredients for use on their trips.
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