More Fairtrade tea vicar?

The smell of fairly traded coffee beans and the clink of tea cups is in the air as churches in Oxford Diocese get ready for The Big Brew, the main event for this year’s Fairtrade Fortnight. Maranda St John Nicolle explains how and why to get involved.

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 3rd to March 10th.

To participate in the event, churches agree to hold a Fairtrade coffee morning and to call it ‘The Big Brew.’ In return, they get free publicity materials, sponsored by Traidcraft; a low-cost catering pack if they wish it; and a wonderful opportunity for outreach and for sharing in the excitement of a diocese-wide occasion.

Churches' creativity means that the coffee mornings are taking many different forms. Some parishes are 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 Fairtrade 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.

Silver Kasoro-Atwoki, a Uganda tea producer, noted: ‘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 twenty 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. In Kintbury, the church is advertising their 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.’

A full list of events will be available on the diocesan website or from 01865 378059. And if you're church isn't doing anything this year, don't worry! Plans are already afoot for Big Brew 2008.

Maranda St John Nicolle is co-ordinator for Christian Concern for One World