Im Rahmen von "aware&fair" arbeiten Kommunen und NGOs in Blantyre, Hannover, Poznan (Polen), Litomerice (Tschechien) und Miskolc (Ungarn) gemeinsam daran, das Bewusstsein für die Milleniumentwicklungsziele und den fairen Handel vor Ort zu erhöhen. „Aware & fair“ – Trading and Acting conscientiously and fairly Cities in an East-West-South-North- dialogue for the Millennium Development Goals The UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) resulted from the Agenda 21 and are aiming for sustainable lifestyles as well as for responsible consumer behaviour worldwide. However, because of the goal’s complexity, their contents continue to be hard to mediate to the public. Therefore the EU announced a program which supports local educational work related to development policy and linked to the MDG’s. The purpose of this support is to make people aware and at the same time to point out specific possibilities for action, like fair trade for example. This opportunity was taken by the Agenda 21 office in Hanover. With the EU’s financial support and a great network of active partners from different communities and countries this was considered to be a great chance to develop and simultaneously put into action more effective ways of communication and mediation. An application for financial support with the motto: “‘aware & fair’ – city games and campaigns as a local reaction to the Millennium Development Goals” was put in and was given consent by the European Commission. The total duration of the project is 2 years, during which the main goal is to create exemplary markets for fair trade products from Malawi (e.g. nuts, tea, rice) in the participating cities. Documentation, reports, pictures etc. are supposed to “give a face” to products, producers and methods of production in order to create transparency and to promote fair trade. The cooperation itself is supposed to strengthen and help improve the education as well as increase motivation. It is expected that intensified relationships between and within the participating cities will be the result of this project. In order to assure this, the project will be carried out by a cooperation between the Agenda 21 office (content related control) and the cultural authorities’ specialized field for twinning partner cities (contract related and financial control). The long-term relations with various active Agenda 21 colleagues from Hanover’s partner cities such as Poznan (Poland), Blantyre (Malawi) and Bristol (England) were helpful in the process of gaining them as cooperation partners. Furthermore, Litomerice (Czech Republic) and Miskolc (Hungary) were motivated to join the project. Both Eastern European cities have already been involved in the international city network ICLEI for sustainable development for many years. The participation as well as the commitment of the Eastern European countries to the FairTrade-Town-campagne contributed a lot in the process of gaining the national FairTrade-Associations as important cooperation partners. With this project we are aiming to achieve the following goals: •support, strengthen and improve the cooperation as well as the exchange of experience between cities involved in the East-West and the North-South dialogues •contribute to a better mutual understanding in the sense of the Agenda 21 and the MDG’s •to search together for answers regarding the question what the MDG’s mean to the different countries / cities and what kind of possibilities there are for action •initiate and support new relations between educational and cultural institutions, trade (commerce), non-governmental organisations and cooperative groups from the participating cities •advertize and promote sustainable and responsible consumption •motivate to purchase fairly traded products •support fair trade and establish, expand as well as stabilize the market (FairTradeTown) •“give a face” to products through transparency •strengthen city partnerships for future plans / cooperation •gather precious information and knowledge for local educational work and campaigns Trading and Acting on a local and personal level in the cities has global effects and consequences – especially for developing countries. The project aware & fair is supposed to raise the awareness for effects caused through local trade and action. With the help of concrete examples it contributes to make those consequences more transparent as well as comprehensible and at the same time points out possibilities for action. Another important goal of the project is to sensitize the people as well as strengthen the cooperation in order to recognize and cope with the global challenges such as the growing poverty, diseases like HIV/AIDS and Malaria, global climate changes, consumption of natural resources, illiteracy, equality and the maximum output for future global oil production. The eight Millennium Development Goals, (which include the principles of the Agenda 21 activities as well as other internationally determined goals settled by the WHO, the World Social Forum, the UNEP an the ILO), serve as the basis for this project. It addresses administration, consumers, educational institutions, trade (commerce), media, sales representatives and non-governmental organisations. Various activities are planned in order to reach as many people as possible. For example at the women’s football world cup there will be goal-walls, which have been creatively designed by artists. The motifs are supposed to deal with the contents of the MDG’s in many different ways. It is planned to place those walls in Hanover, Poznan (Poland), Miskolc (Hungary), Litomerice (Czech Republic) and Blantyre (Malawi, Africa). Besides the city of Hanover, which has the central coordination, participating cities are the ones mentioned earlier. Further local, national and international organisations were gained as cooperation and associated partners. At the end of the year 2012, – 20 years after the resolution in Rio and the signing of the Agenda 21 – there will be a final conference with the international partners of the project in Hanover. The main agenda of this conference will be to present and discuss the experiences, processes and sequences of the events as well as the results of the project.