fair trade faith group.

This year, my church decided to become a Fair Trade Faith Group. What does that mean you ask? Let me tell you!

The Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand (FTA) have a way of recognising community groups and individuals for their support of Fair Trade. There are two minimum requirements for a Community Group to apply:

1. Supporting Fair Trade through using at least 2 products such as tea and coffee that is certified Fairtrade

2. Promoting Fair Trade to the community groups’ members

With these two simple minimum requirements, it’s easy to ‘tick the boxes’ and that’s that. But at our church, we wanted people to have a thorough understanding of why we support fair trade and foster a desire to expand on how we do that. I am really grateful that they wanted to get to the heart of what fair trade is all about.

In May this year, during Fair Trade Fortnight we held a Fair Trade Launch where we celebrated the start of our commitment to fair trade with a themed service, fair trade stall and taste testing during morning tea/supper. It was lots of fun, and wouldn’t have been possible without a fantastic team to pull it off! Massive thankyou to those people, who helped promote, decorate, sang, did a kids talk, brought tea/coffee/teapots & served. It’s because of you that we pulled it off!!! We would love more people on the team to make this happen so please let me know if you're interested!!! I am also greatly encouraged by our leadership who were key drivers in instigating this process.

Once a month we have ‘Social Justice Sunday’ where we focus on a particular Justice topic. This year we have started with the fair trade basics, drawing on the fair trade principles to explore ethical trade. We use Fairtrade certified tea & coffee, have the 10 fair trade principles on display and fair trade brochures available. We used a Fairtrade certified soccer ball for our church soccer game and very soon our youth group will start to fundraise with Fairtrade certified chocolates.

It has been a privilege to be a part of this process and have many people’s great feedback as they expand their understanding and start to promote fair trade themselves in cafes in our local area. I hope to see more community groups make this step and I am very excited by our church community getting on board with fair trade.

On Thursday the 11^th September I’m setting up a fair trade stall and guest speaking about fair trade at Turning Point Community Connections. I'll be sharing at the women's group which runs from 10am-2pm at 80 John St, Camden. We’d love to have you come along to taste test some fair trade tea and coffee, hear about some fair trade producer groups and some intriguing products, and then browse the range of fair trade handicrafts for sale.