March Meeting

Next meeting: 6pm Tuesday 6th March 2012

Venue: The Royal Oak (upstairs)

Topic: Burma

Product of the Week

Product of the week: Children's Toys! Keep your child/children entertained with great toys from the Oxfam shop or online. Even as an adult, you are most welcome to keep yourself entertained with the toys too. Toys know no age limit (advisably for some, they are for 3 years and above). Eric

Product Story: Oxfam has a beautiful range of children's toys from around the world. Barbara Sansoni designs is one of the producers of children's toys. 

"Our products are about creation and design. They are about the inspiration and influence at work behind our intense passion for colour and textiles," Barbara Sansoni, founder of BAREFOOT Sri Lanka.

In 1958, Barbara Sansoni, a colourist, and artist, created the "BAREFOOT" concept out of a need for a rehabilitation program for young Sri Lankan women - who had limited schooling and skills. Today BAREFOOT is a premier textile design company exporting exquisite hand woven fabrics, toys, linen and clothing worldwide. 

BAREFOOT Artisans are dedicated weavers and needlewomen who, without time constraints of mass productions, are able to produce premium quality workmanship. BAREFOOT Sri Lanka opposes exploitive practices. Each artisan earns a real wage enabling them to support their families with self-respect and dignity.

Products of the Day

Products of the day: [New in shop] Bamboo Kitchen storage boxes - assorted sizes. Eric

Product Story: Beautiful Bamboo kitchen tools and accessories handcrafted in Ra Tay province, northern Vietnam. Bamboo is grown in abundance in Vietnam and this fast growing sustainable resource lends itself perfectly for home utensils, furniture and even building material. Strong, insect resistant, versatile, workable and simply beautiful. These items are a perfect examples of what expert craftsmanship can make from a such a humble material.

February Meeting

Meeting  notice

Date: Tuesday 7^th Feb. 2012

Place: Royal Oak, Cnr. Brisbane & Tamar Streets; upstairs in the Boardroom

Time: 6pm (Please arrive earlier to order any food and drinks at the bar before going up to the meeting.)

Meeting Agenda:

1. Reports and planning
2. Sub-groups to plan specific activities, some of which are listed on our Blog
3. Short Oxfam films & short discussions – people at the meeting can vote to choose from the following interest areas:

·         Close the Gap (Aboriginal health)
·         Fair Trade
·         Immunisation
·         Food security in East Timor
·         Climate change - action and information

Our Vision and Values

The Launceston Oxfam Group carries the same vision and values of Oxfam Australia.

Our Vision: A FAIR world in which people control their own lives, their basic rights are achieved and the environment is sustained.

Oxfam Australia aims to increase the number of people who have a sustainable livelihood, access to social services, an effective voice in decisions, equal rights and status, and safety from conflict and disaster.

The work of Oxfam Australia is a partnership through which Australians enable poor and marginalised people to control their own development, achieve equality, exercise their basic rights and ensure the environment is healthy and sustainable.

Our Values: The Group exists with Oxfam Australia to contribute to a fairer world to overcome poverty and injustice - challenging and changing the structural causes of poverty and empowering people to control their lives and achieve their human rights with long-term changes and sustainability.

Oxfam Australia wants to be -

• innovative, dynamic and bold;
• compassionate and committed;
• authoritative and influential;
• transparent, accountable and ethical;
• independent and secular; and
• effective, efficient and capable.

Product of the Day

Product of the day: [New in shop] Tara Projects (India) recycled glassware - assorted colours. Eric

What is Tara Projects?

Tara (Trade Alternative Reform Action) Projects has been working with craftspeople in the Delhi area since the 1970's, with the aim to alleviate poverty through fighting widespread exploitation in the handicraft industry. It now works with 25 community-based groups of artisans.

Tara members are involved in production and marketing (local and export) of handicrafts with the aim to improve the livelihood and eduction of the producers. Tara ensures its artisans are paid at least 15% above the normal wage, paying them up to 50% above standard wages when it can. The producers work within registered cooperative societies; other groups which are not yet registered but operate on just and fair lines, and/or small family workshops are also given some help.

Tara Projects focuses especially on stopping child exploitation, setting up schools and training parents in skills that will help them find a job, so that families will not need to send their children to work. 

Tara Projects' products: The producer groups working with Tara produce a wide variety of products including soapstone boxes, brass candlesticks, boxes and statues and various iron products, such as bells. Making bells, originally to hang around the necks of their animals, is an ancient tribal craft art going back thousands of years in northern India. 

The bells are fashioned from a mix of new and used iron, then sprinkled with glass powder and brass, covered with a pulp clay and jute and fired for 12 hours using coal and cow dung for fuel (the "rasai" process). After cooling in water the blackened clay is removed leaving a golden patina that ages beautifully, and imparts the sonorous musical quality of the bells.

Today, the fastest growing craft for Tara is fashion jewellery, developing a creative as well as economic industry for young women and men struggling to make a living in the urban sprawl of New Delhi.

Tara Projects is a member of the International Fair Trade Association (IFAT).