Name: Katie Fewings

Where I live: Worthing, Sussex, UK

What I do: I run the online ethical wedding planner, Ethical Weddings (designed and built by the wonderful Make Hay of course!) with assistance from my lovely husband, Jamie. Ethical Weddings features an online directory of ethical weddings suppliers from organic caterers to fair trade favours and ethically-sourced engagement rings. We have a growing Ethical Weddings community where brides and grooms can chat and share tips and advice, read and post relevant articles, tell their real ethical wedding stories and blog to their heart’s content!

At present, you will find me working away on Ethical Weddings on Thursdays and Fridays (plus evenings and weekends!). Monday to Wednesday I put on my Project Manager hat for responsibletravel.com in Brighton, coordinating their annual Responsible Tourism Awards and a joint initiative with Conservation International in Washington to promote and support community based tourism ventures.

I also co-founded Our Ethical Network, an ethical business networking group in Brighton giving small ethical businesses the chance to meet up, support each other and even work together. Join our Facebook group here if you want to keep up-to-date with the latest Our Ethical Network events in Brighton.

I try to keep busy!

What I’ll be talking about on GGG: I will mostly be talking about the lovely green people and events in the fair county of Sussex – and there are lots! I do love to be beside the seaside… having escaped from London in 2006!

I will also keep you updated on exciting developments at Ethical Weddings HQ (!) and anything else green and worthy of note that I come across.

What inspires me: All the small businesses that are springing up all over the place clinging on to their principles for dear life and confounding the big corporates who don’t quite get what they’ve got…but as it seems to be working are starting to realise they should get some… if that makes sense!

Who I look up to and respect: This would usually be the section where I name the revered philosopher of ages past who changed my view of the world… in fact, when I sat down to think about it, the people who I really respect and give me great hope for the future are the guys at Fordhall Farm, Charlotte and Ben Hollins and Sophie Hopkins, all in their early twenties. Despite having the odds stacked against them, they started what amounted to a worldwide campaign to save their family farm in Shropshire from developers… and succeeded! Their spirit and determination is a real inspiration.

What I want for the future: For people to realise the value of shopping local and to start to rebuild our communities. Chatting and putting the world to rights not just in online discussion forums but down at the farmers market and over the back fence too!

One last thing: I love being inspired by the green goings on of the girls on the blog. It’s also great to have a bit of debate happening here so please throw any hot topics into the mix (Flying? Carbon offsets? Organic versus local?) we’ll happily get our teeth into them!