Volunteering

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 29 March 2023.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 2:08, 29 March 2023

Diolch yn fawr, Sarah Murphy. It was a great pleasure to visit Sussed Wales. Can I also encourage Members across the Chamber to visit this fantastic fair-trade shop in Porthcawl, run entirely by volunteers—back to the previous question as well? To know that Sussed, the fair-trade business in Porthcawl, has had a huge impact on the town and made it truly a fair-trade town. Margaret Minhinnick, who is one of the key people in Sussed is also—I think she was telling me—either has been or will be president of the chamber of trade. Now, that's the kind of influence we need to have to get fair trade embedded in our towns, because, actually, we have got a number of fair-trade towns in Wales, but we need to make sure that we move forward.

We're formally renewing the status with the UK Fairtrade Foundation, and we continue to fund Fair Trade Wales. I issued a statement on this a couple of weeks ago. But I don't know if colleagues will remember and recall that it's the fifteenth anniversary of Wales becoming a fair-trade nation. We will have some celebrations later this year and we'll be announcing new and stronger criteria, and we're actually working with Scotland on this, because we want to make sure that we can learn together, to get more people in Wales to hear about the importance of fair trade. In fact, on Friday, I'm looking forward to judging a fair-trade competition that children and young people have put forward, on the themes of fair trade. I look forward to doing that in my constituency on Friday.