The Suffolk Association of Fairtrade Towns (SAFT) was set up in 2016 following a visit to Suffolk by Patrick Kaberia – a Fairtrade Farmer from Michimikuru in Kenya – organised by the national Fairtrade Foundation.

All nine Fairtrade towns in Suffolk are members of the association.  Our aims are to promote Fairtrade in Suffolk and to share information on good practice.

We hold an annual conference, usually in July, which has been addressed on several occasions by Mike Gidney, the chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation, who lives locally and is a big supporter of SAFT.

As well as maintaining the website, we have a Facebook page and we have produced a leaflet on ‘Fairtrade in Suffolk’ which is widely available.

We have maintained close links with Patrick Kaberia and, in 2018, he agreed to become the Patron of SAFT.

In 2018 SAFT arranged a live link up between Suffolk schools and Patrick.   Twelve schools took part with pupils from three of them putting questions to Patrick via Zoom.  You can see an edited edition of the event on the ‘schools’ page of this site.  You will also find there links to lots of resources for use by schools and youth groups, many of the featuring Patrick.