'Fairtrade' Status for Church, Circuit & District
Trinity Church in Mow Cop, Biddulph and Congleton Methodist Circuit actively supports a way of trading which gives producers a fair return for their products. As shown in the graph, 'conventional' pricing of bananas condemns growers to live below subsistence level.
What it means in the case of Trinity Church, as an absolute minimum, is that all parts of the church commit to using Fairtrade tea & coffee at all meetings and events. The church must also continue to promote fair trade, for example by supporting the Traidcraft stall, and by encouraging church members to buy Fairtrade products.
A group has been formed, with the support of Churches Together in Congleton, to promote fair trade in Congleton and the surrounding area. Having achieved Fairtrade status for Congleton, we are now close to reaching agreement on advertising that status on the town's boundary signs.
At
the World Mission Forum last year, Philip Warren, a non-executive
director, talked about Traidcraft. He emphasised the importance
of the Christian identity of the organisation, which is something we
can easily overlook. He stressed
Traidcraft's role in
developing new Fairtrade projects. A recent one was to develop a
co-operative amongst rubber producers, which took a phenomenal amount
of negotiation to cut through both Cambodian and Fairtrade politics.
Traidcraft are asking us to buy Traidcraft to enable them to continue
their pioneering work. Historically we have encouraged people to buy
Fairtrade in supermarkets in preference to Traidcraft. He made us think
that‘s wrong: we should be putting Traidcraft first.
