African music for fair trade festival

The Congolese band Congo Bon Chic and the Maltese-African band Hu Jambo will be the main guests at this year's fair trade festival being held at St James Cavalier, in Valletta.

Luca Palagi, an expert on fair trade community projects in Africa, has also been invited to give a seminar and interactive workshops for young people and adults.

The festival, called Taste the World, is being held on Saturday between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. Entrance is free.

It is being organised by the non-profit Fair Trade Cooperative which runs L-Arka, Malta's only fair trade shop, located in St Paul Street, Valletta.

Mr Palagi, who graduated in environmental engineering, coordinates and implements projects aimed at supporting organisations of small handicraft and food producers in Africa.

He regularly visits the communities in Africa that produce fair trade products imported by world shops like L-Arka and has a profound knowledge of the way fair trade has helped these communities improve their quality of life.

He will be leading interactive workshops on Travel through fair trade in Africa: Tales and Pictures from the Producers for youngsters (16 to 18 years) at 10.30 a.m.; at 2 p.m. for 12 to 14-year-olds and at 5 p.m. for the public.

The public will also have the chance to listen to the experiences of an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo at 7 p.m. This talk is being coordinated by Inizjamed with the support of Graffitti group.

During this one-day festival there will be a number of stalls with a brand new stock of foodstuffs, handicrafts, clothes, costume jewellery, CDs of world music and a host of other ethnic products from disadvantaged communities in Africa, Asia and Latin and Central America.

Maltese animators and African dancers will give a number of performances and there will be free tasting of exquisite fair traded coffee between 3 and 6 p.m.

The initiative is being supported by the EU through the Med2000 project which promotes sustainability in the Mediterranean.

For more information contact the organisers at kkg@maltaforum.org or call L-Arka on 2124 4865.