Scottish Fair Trade is proud to launch the Catherine Newman Youth Bursary, supporting young people in Scotland to engage with the international Fair Trade movement.

The bursary has been established in memory of Catherine Newman, a valued friend and colleague who played a major role in organising the International Fair Trade Towns Conference when it was hosted in Edinburgh in 2025.

Catherine believed deeply in the importance of global citizenship, international solidarity and creating opportunities for young people to connect with movements for justice around the world.

Travel and international exchange were hugely important to Catherine throughout her life and helped shape her commitment to fairness and positive social change. Alongside her work on Fair Trade, she was passionate about encouraging young people to become active within the movement and helped develop Scottish Fair Trade’s Youth Collective.

The bursary will fund one young person to attend the 2026 International Fair Trade Towns Conference in Belgium as part of a wider Scottish youth delegation. We hope to continue to build the bursary to enable youth attendance at the conference in future years.

As part of the programme, participants will meet campaigners, producers and Fair Trade advocates from around the world, while developing their own confidence, skills and understanding of global justice.

The Catherine Newman Youth Bursary recipient will take a lead role in creatively documenting and sharing the experience, helping inspire wider youth engagement with Fair Trade in Scotland.

Scottish Fair Trade is now inviting:

• applications from young people interested in attending: apply here
• donations to help grow the bursary fund for future years: donate here

“Travel was a huge part of Catherine’s life and helped shape her desire to make a positive difference to others. Last year, she worked tirelessly to help make the International Fair Trade Towns Conference in Edinburgh such a success, while also playing a key role in developing our youth engagement work. So creating a bursary in her memory to support young people to travel, be inspired and create change of their own feels a very fitting way to continue that legacy.”

Louise Davies, Scottish Fair Trade