Sweet Message From St Matthew’s In Stockport

I’m delighted to have received the very first contribution about Fair Trade from Pam Robinson, from St Matthew’s, of the Parish of Edgeley and Cheadle Heath in Stockport.

Stockport is about 220 miles away from Chandler’s Ford, and you can imagine my joy when Pam’s message came through from the north of the country. Thank you Pam!

Let’s enjoy Pam’s wonderful story below:

By Pam Robinson, Stockport:

Over the last few years, we have supported Fair Trade Fortnight at St Matthew’s in Stockport. We have planned in advance and alerted people through the notice sheet, magazine and website that the event was coming up.

We celebrate the event on the middle Sunday of the two weeks, although the information remains on display for the whole period. We promote the event during the service. Posters go up, inside and outside church.

We have information sheets to hand out and they usually include a challenge – for example, Change one thing in your regular shop to a fair trade item.

We have a quiz for children and samples of fair trade tea, coffee and biscuits.

Last  year, we had a free raffle for everyone who enjoyed a sample of any of the goods.  We contacted the local Co-op in advance and they gave us £30 in vouchers for fair trade goods at their shop; that’s where the samples and most of the prizes came from!

We are hoping to be recognised as a Fair Trade Church, which means we promise to only buy fair trade tea and coffee in church (progressing to fair trade biscuits in church, too, and then extend this promise to all meetings, etc). Our church recently merged from three congregations; not all of them were Fair Trade Churches so we have had to start again.

We intend to do it because we believe in fair trade and Fair Trade.