Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. 

Exeter Diocese is working towards becoming a fairtrade Diocese.  Has your Church signed up yet?  Are you working towards this aim?  It means providing fairtrade refreshments (tea, coffee, sugar) at all your Church events, and moving towards serving other fairtrade goods too. Also, importantly, to buy local as well, ie local milk – as we cannot grow our own tea here in Devon!

Below is an article taken from the Fairtrade Foundation:

BBC2’s ‘The Tea Trail’, featuring adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve  headed to Kenya and then on to the undulating hills of Mabale, Uganda, to uncover some of the people and their stories behind the nation’s best loved cuppa.Tea is the most popular drink in the world after water, with 70,000 cups drunk per second and is an industry which involves 50 million people globally in many of the world’s least developed countries.

Selling tea should be helping the people who grow it to improve their lives but the industry that supplies our favourite drink is affected by endemic poverty, low wages and increasingly climate change.Part of the problem is that we are not paying enough for our tea bags.  Visit your local supermarket and you might be delighted to buy a heavily discounted bargain-priced box of tea bags. However, there is a human cost behind this low price and the reality is that low retail prices do not leave sufficient value in the supply chain for everyone to have their fair share. This means that producers and workers remain in poverty.

We believe that more of the industry should be striving to buy tea under Fairtrade terms. All own-label tea in Sainsbury’s, Co-op, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer is Fairtrade certified.  In addition,  leading Fairtrade brands Clipper, Cafedirect and Traidcraft also sell tea with the Fairtrade label. However Fairtrade tea represents less than 10% of the UK market.

Fairtrade empowers workers by ensuring workers’ rights improvements, including permanent contracts, regulated working hours and overtime, maternity, holiday and sick pay. Small farmers are also able to gain access to markets and accumulate capital for reinvestment.

However, the key benefit is the Fairtrade Premium. In 2012 over $6m in Fairtrade Premium was paid directly to workers on Fairtrade certified estates and those in smallholder organisations to be used for community benefit including schools, healthcare and community resources as decided by the communities themselves. The problem is that due to low market sales only 6% of Fairtrade certified tea is sold under Fairtrade terms. This means many tea estates and small farmers receive a tiny amount of Fairtrade Premium to improve the lives of workers and their families.

Fairtrade has long been championing and advocating for industry-wide change in the tea sector, primarily for more tea to be sold under the terms of Fairtrade.

A recent Fairtrade Foundation study in Malawi shows what is possible when tea estates are able to secure a higher proportion of sales on Fairtrade terms. In Malawi, workers have had significant benefits, including subsidised maize and fertiliser to improve food security, health and education programmes, and solar panels for homes.
Ultimately we all need to work harder. The different players in the tea industry need to form stronger partnerships and bring workers’ and producers’ voices to the fore. And as tea drinkers we must also realise that every single one of those cuppas represents a powerful choice for change, if we choose it.

www.fairtrade.org.uk

St Andrews Church,  Colyton is to stage a flower festival from 19^th – 22^nd June 2014.

The title of the festival will be “Bridal Flowers & Fashion”. As the name implies there will be a wedding theme, with flower displays, bridal dresses and accessorises with particular reference to the bridal styles of the last 50 years. Honiton Museum has kindly agreed to loan some Honiton lace wedding veils as part of the exhibition.

The festival will be open from 10am Thursday 19^th – Saturday 21^st and from 10.30am on Sunday 22^nd. Refreshments will be provided throughout the day in the church grounds. In addition concerts will take place at 7.30pm Wednesday – Saturday by Andrew Millington (Exeter Cathedral Director of Music), Nick Brown (St Andrews Director of Music) and the choir of St Andrews. During the daytime there will also be shorter impromptu recitals. More details of these musical events will follow later. The festival will conclude with a service of thanksgiving on Sunday 22^nd at 6.30pm.

Please do have a look at the attached update which gives  news on our Companion Diocese of Thika, Kenya.  Just click on the link below:

Thika update for linked parishes Jan 2014

 Community Café is held every Tuesday morning, 9.30-11.30am in St Andrew’s Church, Colyton.

A great place to pop in for a mug of fresh fairtrade  coffee or tea and a slice of delicious

home made cake!  Everyone is made welcome and there is a toy box for the little ones! What a great way to start the day!

• The Diocese is encouraging us all to become Fairtrade Churches with a view to becoming a Fairtrade Diocese.
• To do this you will need to commit to three things:
• We will use Fairtrade tea, coffee, sugar when we serve refreshments, after services and for all church events. (Churches that do not usually serve refreshments after their services are still eligible as long as you serve Fairtrade whenever refreshments are served.)
• We will move forward on using Fairtrade biscuits and fruit as they become more available and look for local milk and produce from our Devon farmers whenever possible.
• We will feature and explain Fairtrade principles throughout the year but particularly during Fairtrade Fortnight (annually in Feb/March).

If you can commit to these three simple steps – and many churches are already doing these – then please register as a Fairtrade Church with the Diocese and the Fairtrade Foundation.