Bags designed by young islanders which highlight the importance of Fairtrade products are now available to buy at your local Grand Marchés in St Helier and St Peter.

Linda Correia (11) and Sari Hunt (9) are our Jersey winners of our ‘Design a Fairtrade Bag’ competition, which ran during this year’s annual Fairtrade Fortnight. Both islanders’ designs illustrate the positive effects that buying Fairtrade products can have.

Sari’s design features the Fairtrade logo and a number of Fairtrade products sold across our stores. Whereas Linda’s bag includes images of two well-known Fairtrade goods, bananas and chocolate, and says ‘the Co-op is proud to support Fairtrade’. Each islander will have their design printed on 250 bags.

We launched the competition for Jersey and Guernsey school children to enter as part of our continued efforts to reduce single-use plastics across all our stores, while at the same time highlighting the importance of supporting Fairtrade.

Linda said: ‘I wanted to draw some Fairtrade items and I wanted to add the quote. I wrote the quote in bubble writing and then thought of some Fairtrade items. I drew them and coloured everything in.

‘It feels amazing to win. It’s one of the first things I’ve ever won. Fairtrade is very important because it makes sure that the people who grow Fairtrade items live healthily and have good working conditions.’

The Fairtrade Foundation was formed in 1992 to support producers working in developing countries. Being Fairtrade means creating better prices for products, making sure working conditions are as good as they can be and providing fair terms of trade for both farmers and workers in the developing world. Fairtrade requires companies to pay sustainable prices – which must never fall lower than the market price.

Mark Cox, the Society’s chief operating officer, said: ‘As the largest supplier of Fairtrade goods in the Channel Islands, the ‘Design a Fairtrade Bag’ competition is a perfect example of us working together with the local community to promote the importance of supporting Fairtrade.  We are so pleased that so many young people entered this competition to show what supporting Fairtrade meant to them.

‘Both Linda and Sari’s designs are fantastic and we can’t wait to see the bags in our stores. This competition was a great opportunity for our younger generation to not only promote Fairtrade, but to help us reduce our impact on the environment by reducing the amount of plastic we use.’

In both islands one winner was from a primary school and the other was a secondary school student. The winners all received a goody-bag of Fairtrade items, as well as having their designs printed on to the bags.