Sofia and I are getting married in just under two months. The wedding will be in Småland, Sweden and we’re really excited about our friends and family who are coming! As we’ve been preparing I’ve been able to learn a bit more about the legal side of marriage over here. I’m a UK citizen (and resident) and Sofia is a Swedish citizen (and resident). Here’s the process we have gone through so far…

1. Certificate of No Impediment: I visited a registry office in the UK and notified them of my intention to marry Sofia.  I had to show them various forms of identification and provide them with her details, as well as the details of where we will be getting married.  These are placed on a notice board for 6 weeks to give members of the general public an opportunity to notify them if I have been married before.  Once the 6 weeks are up, the Certificate of No Impediment is issued.  According to Swedish law, the certificate is valid for 3 months from the date of issue.
2. Marriage Licence: Next we visited Skatteverket (the Swedish Tax Office), filled in forms and provided them with our IDs (Passport for me, ID card for Sofia) and the Certificate of No Impediment.  They took photocopies of our IDs and the Certificate and will mail us the Licence within 2 weeks. This license will be valid for 4 months, so it was important that we visited Skatteverket at the right time: too early and we would have a license that expired before our wedding, too late and our Certificate of No Impediment would expire.
3. The Wedding: This can be officiated either by a state official (at a District Court, or City Hall), or a Vicar (in this case it’s the person, not the venue, that counts).

Here are a few resources you might find useful if you’re going through this process:

• Embassy of Sweden, London: Getting Married in Sweden
• About.com: Swedish Marriage License Information

(photo: Sharaff)

Make Things Fair

For a while I’ve dreamed of setting up a site that will act as a source for information on Human Trafficking and Fair Trade, telling stories as well as offering ways to take action. A few months ago, after a little brainstorming with some friends (thanks Mark), I purchased the makethingsfair.com domain name. I hope that it will become a valuable resource and a place for sharing ideas and activities.

If you care about these issues, please show your support by:

1. Subscribing to receive email updates (click here)
2. Following @makethingsfair on Twitter
3. Contributing stories by email (stories [at] makethingsfair [dot] com)

Click here to visit Make Things Fair

Looks Can Kill

The website of my web design and development company, Looks Can Kill, hasn’t changed much since I first started the company back in 2005. I wanted to freshen it up, and to integrate it with Wordpress, in the hope of expanding my portfolio offering, and having a place to file web related blog posts.

Click here to visit Looks Can Kill

Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, Zanu-PF, has recently renewed its interest in diamonds. Diamonds are a valuable asset for foreign exchange, especially when a government has been cut off from the international community by sanctions.
Late last year the military moved into Chiadzwa and began confronting and arresting independent miners. A helicopter attack in December left 200 dead and there are assertions that the military has claimed more victims. Zimbabwe’s opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), for example, says that hundreds more miners are buried in mass graves.

“I am earning in real money, it feels good,” says Majuru. “I can now put food on the table and feed my family.” A smile spreads across his face.

(read more here)

There’s another project that I’m actually quite deeply involved in, which is based on a book called “What is the What” by Dave Eggers, who you know probably from his first novel, which was called “A Heartbreaking World of Staggering Genius”, that was his first book. He’s a great writer and he did a book called “What is the What” that is based on the story of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. I’m developing that too right now.

(via kottke)

We noticed as we were getting in that this bus was extremely dirty. Filthy actually. And there was no air conditioning. As soon as we got on I noticed that they were all Palestinians on this bus. Immediately a lady holding her young son said to us in near-perfect English, “This is the bus for the Palestinians. You need to be on that other bus. It’s for foreigners and tourists.” I responded, “Oh that’s okay, we don’t mind coming with you”. She said, “Well, thank you, but you can’t. You HAVE to go on that bus.”

(read more here)

The idea of exploiting others to enjoy the most special moment of your life seems entirely alien to me. An ethically sound wedding was the only option. Fairtrade was the name of the game - our roses, wine and wedding rings were all sourced with ethics in mind.

(read more here)

In the case of Nigeria, in 2007, the French tire maker Michelin came in to the Iguóbazuwa Forest Reserve, a biologically diverse region supplying food for around 20,000 people. Michelin bulldozed the forest and local farm lands to convert them into rubber plantations. Women living there lost their subsistence farms and the local forest which provided medicinal herbs and plants.

~ Sustainablog

He [Jesus] goes to visit the home of these two women. Martha takes her assigned role taking care of the kitchen, taking care of preparing food. Mary, on the other hand, decides to go and sit at the feet of the rabbi as only men were allowed to do in those days. Here is a woman breaking the social morés of the society, sitting, learning Torah from a rabbi with other men. Martha complains. At this point, Jesus says, “Martha, Mary has chosen the better thing to do.”

Charles Finney was the Billy Graham of the 1800s. When you came down the aisle and accepted Jesus as your personal savior at a Finney revival, he took you in the back room, where there were two tables, one table to sign up for the anti-slavery movement and the other for the feminist movement. When they took you in the back room, they didn’t give you a Gospel of John. You had to sign up for what he believed God was doing in the world at that time. And at that time, he saw that the great movements of God were the abolition of slavery and the liberation of women from their servitude.

~ click here to read more

100 years ago William Cadbury chose beans from Ghana. A year ago we founded the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership. And from Autumn 2009 Cadbury Dairy Milk will be Fairtrade certified. Welcome aboard.

Click here for more (Thanks, @nomesbaker)