Another week of events will raise awareness on Fairtrade and empower female cocoa farmers across the world.

Fairtrade Fortnight will be celebrated in Brampton for the next week with a coffee morning, school events, town-wide scavenger hunts, and decorations scattered around the shop windows.

There is a coffee morning on Saturday in the Moot Hall between 9.30am and 12pm.

Earlier this week there was a chocolate promotion in collaboration with the Co-op.

Kate Allan, co-ordinator for Brampton Fairtrade, said: “It raises awareness of what Fairtrade is about.

“It raises the profile of what the issues are and this year the theme is chocolate, it is about female farmers.

“Most cocoa plantations in places like the Cote d’Ivoire are small businesses and the women work really hard, they do a lot of the work.”

Brampton has been a Fairtrade town for 15 years which means it has to meet certain criteria to keep this status.

Most of the shops will be decorating their windows for the fortnight and quite a few have an extensive list of Fairtrade stock.

Kate said: “We do something every year and we became a Fairtrade town in 2005. We had to meet certain criteria ,like so many shops sold Fairtrade goods and the cafes use Fairtrade products.

“We have to renew that every two years and we have to meet the criteria, which we always do and they always congratulate us on what we have done.”

The town is proud of its support for Fairtrade – so much so, it has signs declaring that it is a Fairtrade town and also a flowerbed with the Fairtrade logo on it.

The fortnight ends on March 8.