Talk On Fair Trade At Christ Church

Meeting hears that UK leads the world in selling Fairtrade goods

The first meeting of the autumn season of St Andrew’s Fellowship was held on Monday 9 September about Fairtrade and also provided a great many goods for sale.

Approximately 26 people attended and £290 was raised for Traidcraft.

L-R David Brown, Simon Rodway, Avril Brown

The meeting was preceded by a lunch of mainly Fairtrade ingredients, which was provided by members of Christ Church, and raised an additional £60.

David and Avril Brown came to speak and David Brown spoke about the history of Traidcraft, which works with 1.24 million people across 66 developing countries. Since 2011 there has been an increase in trade of 19% and the UK leads the world in selling Fairtrade goods.

Many of the suppliers of goods we buy daily have now gone over to providing Fairtrade food including Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and also the Co-op. In 2012 people in England drank 3.2 million cups of FT tea and ate 1.3 billion FT bananas.

Traidcraft has helped to address the issue of poverty in many countries, although trade structures still need improvement. We still need a campaign to end unfair trading. Traidcraft works with small farmers and remote producers. It gives them a hand up, not a hand out and helps farmers to trade their way out of poverty.

It has to be responsible and acceptable and uphold high standards.

We were shown slides of the work being done and were enormously impressed by the commitment and inspiration shown by the speakers and their organisation.

Simon Rodway, Co-Chair of St Andrew’s Fellowship.

September 13, 2013