The Fairtrade Foundation, a registered charity, has come up with a novel way of developing interest in the Fair Trade movement and its Fair Trade Towns campaign.

The foundation has established a walking route between Garstang in Lancashire, England, the world's first Fairtrade town; and the Fairtrade town of Keswick in Cumbria.

Billed as the Fair Trade Way, hence promoting the consumption of products that carry the ethical kitemark, the long-distance footpath can be enjoyed as part of a six day walk between Garstang and Keswick.

The walk hopes to encourage people to celebrate the worthwhile impact Fairtrade products have on the lives of people who are often slaving away in difficult conditions to produce cheap goods for the West...

Scenic and historic highlights along the way include Lancaster Canal, Carnforth Railway Station (where cinema classic Brief Encounter was filmed), Arnside and the Kent Estuary, Levens Hall and Park, Scout Scar, an impressive limestone escarpment, Dove Cottage (Wordsworth’s home) and many others...

Fairtrade organisations, supported by consumers, support producers by developing Fairtrade products giving a better deal to producers; also raising awareness about the need for change in the way the conventional systems of international trade work.

Ultimately much of the devastating levels of poverty in the world are based around inequality and much of that is contingent on unequal systems of trade between big corporations and small producers in the third world...

The Fairtrade charity encourages people to support ethically sold Fairtrade products that make a difference to people’s lives with more money going to the producers in countries across Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere so they can invest more in their communities.

On the Fair Trade Way walkers are being encouraged to muse on the values of Fair Trade, support Fairtrade stores and towns.

Fairtrade town status can be achieved by a collective statement of a town in favour of ethical trade, including businesses, the local authority and the wider community...

The Fairtrade Foundation says it is a way of sending a powerful message out to the wider world about how a community works and what its values are.

Research by the Fairtrade Foundation suggests that four out of five people prefer to support companies that are helping to reduce poverty via their business practices...