The Rainbow Turtle Rebooted Podcast is back, just in time for Fair Trade Fortnight 2026. This is a short taster to give you an idea of what this new series is about.

I have gone back to Fürth in northern Bavaria, Germany, to interview some of the interesting people I met who were involved in fair trade.

Episode 1 is with Yana Leber of the Welt Haus in Fürth. The Welt Haus houses the fair trade shop, Welt Laden, the fair trade clothing company, Farcap, and some local community groups. Yana is also heads up their fair trade education in schools and with adult groups.

In episode 2, I interview Frank Braun of CaWeLa, a local importer and distributer of fair trade products. He also has some really interesting stories of supplying clothing and food to refugee camps during the Bosnian war, of working for Siemens in the US and setting up Germany's first transition town.

For episode 3, I meet Andreas Schneider, the director of the Welt Laden, or fair trade shop in Fürth. He originally studied theology before moving into fair trade in Nuremberg and Fürth. As well as writing and speaking about fair trade he is a self professed expert in tea, coffee, chocolate and wines. A useful person to know!

I'm trying to line up a few more interviews that I hope to bring out for fair trade fortnight which starts on Monday 21st September...

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Back in September of last year, I met Philipp Abel, who is the head of sustainability at Fürth City Council in Germany. He revealed to me that Fürth was twinned with our town Paisley in Scotland and wanted to establish fair trade links between our two towns. Embarrassingly, I didn't know that we were twinned with Fürth but I was delighted that he wanted to create links with us.

The town twinning movement has been going on for at least 50 years. It is such a good idea to create connections between different towns in different countries rather than building walls. It struck me that adding the layer of fair trade to that relationship enhanced it because it meant we were looking outwards to different parts of the world and creating more links.

Since then Philipp and I have met a few times on line and talked about how we can work together through education exchanges and sharing ideas between our fair trade businesses. He also invited me to join in with their 10th anniversary celebrations of Fürth becoming a fair trade city in February 2026.

Philipp talks about his own family story of creating connections between different countries and the work that Fürth have done to promote fair trade in their city.

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This is a heads up of a special podcast episode that we'll be putting out on the 9th February.

I've been recently talking to Philipp Abel, the head of sustainability at Fürth City Council in northern Bavaria, in Germany, about their commitment to fair trade. I met Philipp back in September 2025 at a fair trade towns conference in Edinburgh and discovered that Fürth was twinned with our town Paisley, in Scotland.

We quickly realised that we had a lot in common, particularly with fair trade, and decided to use our twinning links to support each other in the work that we do. One thing that interested me was to hear more about Fürth's and Philipp's stories and to put them out on our podcast in time for Fürth's 10th anniversary as a fair trade city at the beginning of February.

So look out for our next episode of Rainbow Turtle Rebooted, coming out on Monday the 9th of February, about the work that is going on in Fürth, in particular their commitment to purchasing fair trade products as part of their public procurement policy.

Email us on info@rainbowturtle.org.uk

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