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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