Oxford Churches Get Kettle Ready for Fairtrade Fortnight

|PIC1|In the first week of March, the smell of fairly traded coffee beans and the clink of tea cups will fill the air across Oxford Diocese as its churches get ready for The Big Brew, the main event for this year's Fairtrade Fortnight.

More than 80 Anglican churches around the three counties will be brewing up Fairtrade tea and coffee as Oxford Diocese, in conjunction with Traidcraft, holds its first-ever 'Big Brew' from March 3 to March 10.

The Big Brew will see churches across the diocese hold a Fairtrade coffee morning with the help of free materials provided by Traidcraft.

Maranda St John Nicolle, co-ordinator for Christian Concern for One World, said the event was "a wonderful opportunity for outreach and for sharing in the excitement of a diocese-wide occasion".

And the coffee mornings are being readied in various shapes and form, with some parishes doing special editions of after-service coffee, while others are offering stand-alone coffee mornings in aid of a specific cause. The benefice of Wargrave with Knowl Hill is holding Big Brews in home groups; St Nicolas, Newbury, is combining its Big Brew with an arts festival; a fair trade representative in the Botley team is having an "at home" lunch and fair trade sale; and St Nicholas, Beedon, is holding a tea in a primary school.

All of the activities are designed to heighten awareness of the benefits that buying Fairtrade-branded goods brings to producers - and how good Fairtrade products now taste. Fairtrade helps producers with product development, guarantees the rights of farmers and workers, and offers producers both a guaranteed fair price for their goods and a social premium for community development.

"The results benefit not only the producers but also their surrounding communities - and consumers," said Ms St John Nicolle.

Silver Kasoro-Atwoki, a Uganda tea producer, said: "Through Fairtrade, we have been able . . . to improve the quality and quantity of our teas. We have opened new access roads to benefit all in the community, assisted in providing primary healthcare through construction of health clinics and added a new block to the local secondary school."

Many Oxford Diocese churches have long supported Fair Trade. Margaret Dykes of Chalfont St Giles, where the Big Brew will follow a Lenten Lunch, has been a Traidcraft fair trader for about 20 years.

She explains: "I believe that it is important for our church to support fair trade because we pray to God every week to help the poor and the oppressed, and fair trade does do that for people around the world."

"The Big Brew not only reinforces the support already extant in congregations, it also offers new opportunities for outreach," said Ms St John Nicolle.

In Kintbury, the church is advertising its special post-service coffee, to be served from a poster-festooned trolley, around the village and in the parish newsletter. And at Cogges, which is dedicating its monthly coffee morning as a Big Brew, Jackie Archer is emphasising the opportunity for "the neighbourhood to come in and see about Fairtrade".