Stonehouse Methodist Church Focus meeting, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 IT WAS good to welcome a group of Christians from Churches Together in Stonehouse to a talk on Traidcraft given by Revd Noel Sharp from Gloucester as part of this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Noel had been on a Traidcraft ‘Meet the People’ Tour to Thailand about five years ago and gave an interesting and inspiring talk about his trip, illustrated with many photos of wealth and poverty, disaster and success, sadness and joy. It made us very grateful for all we have in this country and glad that through buying Fairtrade products from our church’s Traidcraft stall and from various supermarkets we are doing a small part to make the lives of many people in developing countries a little easier.

Noel visited silk producers, making wonderful coloured and patterned cloth – he was himself wearing a silk shirt with elephants on it – a woodcarver, a silver jewellery maker and even an elephant dung paper producer and showed us examples of their work. From sales of their products Traidcraft is able to ensure these producers get a fair wage, and pays a premium to the various organisations, both small and larger, to help support families by providing healthcare, education and medium-term business opportunities.

The Fairtrade movement has been gathering pace over recent years and Noel hoped that we would all continue to look out for familiar and new products bearing the Fairtrade mark when we do our shopping.

The evening finished with a cup of Fairtrade coffee brewed by the church’s new filter coffee machine purchased from funds raised by Ginny Young’s Traidcraft stall over the past year. A collection was made for Traidcraft Exchange and quite a few purchases were made from the stall that evening.