User:Vegetablelove/Scottish Fair Trade Forum

The Scottish Fair Trade Forum is a Scottish charitable body that describes its mission as to gain Fair Trade Nation status for Scotland and build upon that achievement to embed the values of fairness in all aspects of Scottish society. Its ultimate aim is to achieve this through involvement in helping individual towns, schools, councils and public bodies throughout the country achieve Fair Trade Status.

Organisation
The Forum consists of a headquarters in Edinburgh with a board convening in Glasgow, and relies on a nationwide network of volunteers to help support Fair Trade Groups throughout the country. In addition, it also relies on voluntary work to carry out its more centralised functions -including administrative work- and to help carry out the charity's campaigns.

History
After the Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition government of the Scottish Parliament engaged in talks with the Welsh Assembly over each country's commitment to the Fair Trade Movement, the Scottish administration publicly committed to the Forum's creation on 27 January 2007. .The Forum was officially launched by the Scottish Parliament on 27 October 2007. As Wales reached Fair Trade Nation status in 2008, the Fair Trade Forum now aims to make Scotland the second Fair Trade Nation in the world.

Campaigns
The organisation's ultimate campaign goal is to get Scotland granted Fair Trade Nation status by meeting the following goals:

·Having every Local Authority in Scotland containing Fair Trade groups working toward Fairtrade Zone status,

·Having 55% of Scotland's Local Authorities with Fairtrade Zone status, increasing 10% per year until all 32 are Fairtrade Zones,

·Having all of Scotland's city's declared Fairtrade,

·Having 60% of Scottish universities contain active Fair Trade groups working toward Fairtrade status for their institutions,

·Having the percentage of Scots who know about Fair Trade increase 5% every year to 75%, with three quarters of this number buying a Fairtrade product every year and two fifths doing so regularly.

Supporting Campaigns
Additionally, the Forum runs other sub-campaigns to promote its push towards Fair Trade Nation status for Scotland. Its active campaign is presently the Countdown Campaign, which aims to secure Fair Trade Nation status by 2012 through encouraging both individuals and organisations to devote a single day in 2011 to engaging with the Fair Trade movement in some form. It also runs a yearly Campaign Day at a different place each year in Scotland, where it gathers people from all over Scotland to coordinate progress towards Fair Trade Nation status.