In November 2005 we agreed to aim to become a ‘Fair Trade’ Church. This means have committed ourselves to:

• Use Fairtrade tea and coffee for all meetings for which we have responsibility


• Move forward on using other Fairtrade products (such as sugar, biscuits, fruit)


• Promote Fairtrade during Fairtrade Fortnight - and through other activities whenever possible

That seems a good way to mark 2005 when many people tried hard to ‘make Poverty History’.

Since then each March we hold a ‘Fairtrade Sunday lunch’ to publicise the campaign and products. Many people support our Fairtrade lunch, and we normally raise over £100 for Fairtrade. The Duke of Edinburgh's Award group run this each year.

This has developed into a Fairtrade stall which is held each month and sells a wide variety of fairly traded goods.

To illustrate the difference this can make here is a story from Africa.

Kapasule is the first village in the Chikwawa district of Southern Malawi to benefit from the Fairtrade premium received by their Cane Growers’ association. Now local people have their own supply of clean, fresh water. Before the bore-hole was dug, women and children had to carry water in containers for a mile from a nearby village. The village chief explained that it is the first of many improvements planned for local villages, paid for with the Fairtrade premium *.

There are more than 50 people in the village. Only some of them are farming cane sugar, but all are benefiting from the water. They are always told that the money for this came from the sugar.

The very first thing that the people needed was water. Now we have one bore-hole. In the future I would like us to have three.

We have more plans for the future. We want to improve the local hospital and also build a community day secondary school, so that village children can get there easily.

We would like people in the UK to buy more than they are buying now. Since the village is poor, the more people buy our sugar, the more we can help our community.

* The Fairtrade price includes a premium which is set aside for farmers and workers to spend on social and environmental projects or to strengthen their organisations.