A REPRESENTATIVE of a Malawi tea growing group is to tour Cumbria during Fairtrade Fortnight to promote the work of the foundation that supports farmers and workers in the developing world.

Francis Chisuse, a representative of the Fairtrade certified association of smallholder tea growers in Malawi, will speak to schools and community groups and visit shops, youth groups and farmers’ markets.

He will be hosted by the Cumbria Fair Trade Network, an alliance of countywide Fairtrade groups, during the whole of the fortnight, which runs from February 27 to March 11.

School and youth group visits include Arnside Primary School on February 29 and Croftlands Junior School, Ulverston, and Pennington Primary School on March 8.

Mr Chisuse will also address the Arnside and Kirkby Lonsdale Fairtrade Groups on February 29 as well as being in Dalton on March 2, Coniston on March 7 and Ulverston the following day.

There is also to be a special event put on by the new National Park Fairtrade Steering Group, with the support of the Ambleside and Windermere Fairtrade Groups, at the Lake District National Park Visitor Centre at Brockhole on March 7.

Mr Chisuse will also attend a Fairtrade Schools Conference on March 9.

The day after he will attend the Cumbria Fair Trade Network’s annual general meeting at the Ambleside Parish Centre “We are very fortunate to have Francis for the whole of the fortnight,” said Cumbria Fair Trade Network co-ordinator Joe Human, from Keswick. “We know that Fairtrade has had a massive impact on the lives of millions of farmers and their families worldwide.

“But to have someone who knows first-hand just what that means will perhaps convince more people that Fairtrade is a powerful way by which vulnerable communities can be helped to trade their way out of poverty, and that we have the ability, if we want to use it, to involve ourselves in that trade every day, simply by the way we shop.”

In Cumbria there are 21 Fairtrade towns. Dalton-in-Furness is aspiring to become a Fairtrade Town and the Lake District National Park is looking to be the first National Park in the world to become a Fairtrade Zone.

There are 17 Fairtrade schools in the county with others in the pipeline.