The Fair Trade Shop, Ipswich
Making a world of difference
Opening hours
Monday -
Making a world of difference
The Fair Trade Shop
15 Orwell Place
Ipswich
Suffolk
IP4 1BD
Tel: 01473 288225
Buying fair trade products makes a real difference to people's lives, helping to build a better future for them, their families and their communities.
We sell a wide range of products from foodstuffs to crafts made from many materials from across the world to recycled paper products
Our products
People like Shivagami are convinced of the benefits of Fair Trade. She is a tea picker, and works on the Nilgiri estate in Southern India. When she went to work there, it was owned by the British, and in common with most of the estates from which Britain gets its most popular drink, conditions were not good. Work was dawn ‘til dusk, with wages insufficient to cover the basics of life. Home was a line room, part of a mud and stone barrack with inadequate sanitation. Women were encouraged to have children, although there was no maternity pay or child care, for this provided more workers for the estate. If you were born on a tea estate, you would probably live your life and die there. But Shivagami has been lucky. The estate was taken over in 1993 and the improvements have resulted in it being awarded the fair trade mark. She now has an employment contract, with a set working week and bonus payments, and there is maternity leave, child care and education for the children. The workers have decent housing and land to grow their own food. Life is still hard by our standards, but it is secure and far better than before. Best of all, however, is that the families have the opportunity to change their destiny. Her daughter wants to be a doctor, her son hopes to be an engineer. One day they may realise their ambitions. But other tea workers continue to live and work in unimaginably bad conditions.
Fair trade tea ensures that we get a quality drink, and those who work to produce it get a fair deal. Quality in taste: equality in trade. Truly something for everyone!
Fair trade tea ensures that we get a quality drink, and those who work to produce it get a fair deal. Quality in taste: equality in trade. Truly something for everyone!
There are a number of Fair Trade groups which supply the products for sale in the shop.