Fairtrade cookbook helps churches with frugal lunches

Churches and charities in the West often organise frugal lunches or hunger lunches to raise funds for mission work, aid projects or disaster relief, but there is little guidance on how to plan, organise and publicise these events according to recipe book author and Tearfund supporter Gordon Wilkinson.

He and his wife Brenda are trying to make up for the shortfall by providing a brief guide and offering free access to all the recipes in their fundraising book, 'Recipes for Disaster...Relief and Development'.

"The essential ingredients for a successful frugal lunch are effective publicity, a dedicated team of helpers and good timing," said Wilkinson.

"You have to get enough people at the event, otherwise all your efforts will be wasted, and assuming that you get a good attendance, you must have enough help to ensure that everything runs like clockwork."

Wilkinson has put together a seven-point check-list for a successful fundraising lunch, which reminds churches, among other things, to ensure that their event does not clash with a similar event in their area, and pick a theme that will generate local media interest.

Brenda and Gordon Wilkinson came up with the idea for their fundraising cookbook after eating rice and beans every day during a Tearfund Study Tour to Honduras in 2004.

"We wondered what people ate in other countries where Tearfund works, so we began a two-year search for recipes from across the globe. Quite a few can be used for frugal lunches," said Gordon Wilkinson.

"Tearfund volunteers in Scotland, for example, have used a Caribbean recipe from Haiti for several years at fundraising events. This particular recipe includes Fairtrade-certified rice and we would encourage people to use Fairtrade ingredients wherever possible. Offering free downloads from our website brings these recipes to an international audience."

Since its launch in June 2006, Recipes for Disaster has been one of the UK's best-selling charity cookbooks. "They are still selling well," says Brenda Wilkinson, "and by the end April 2008 we had sold over 3,600 copies and raised more than £21,000 for Tearfund's work."

For every £7 book sold, £6 goes towards Tearfund.

For more information and to download recicpes, go to www.recipesfordisaster.org