Inverleith St Serf’s Church and Goldenacre Fairtrade won two Lord Provost of Edinburgh Fair Trade awards last night: the Fair Trade Achievement Award and Fair Trade Faith Community Award.
The awards celebrate the long term commitment to fairtrade and more recent innovations, including their support of the Muirhouse Community Shop on Pennywell Road.
Inverleith St Serf’s Church’s fairtrade connection started almost 20 years ago, with Ian and Alison Craddock at Inverleith Church and Bridgid Donald at St Serf’s Church establishing fairtrade stalls.
With the merger of the two churches into Inverleith St Serf’s Church there was an opportunity to expand the stall and provide greater choice of items for sale for members of the congregation and the wider community – the charity aim to have new items on the stall every fortnight.
The stall has been in the Traidcraft ‘Top Seller’ category for thee years and has seen orders of fairtrade items increase from £3,315 in 2010 to £7,075 in 2014, principally through Traidcraft, One World Shop and Hadeel. There has been a year on year increase in sales over this period.
The stall set up a Twitter feed early 2013 (@FairtradeStall), tweeting about fairtrade and UK and global poverty and other topical issues aimed at reaching a wider audience (e.g. local events, news, music, literature, photography). Through this social media activity the stall established a link with Tenants and Residents in Muirhouse (TRIM).
Two large donations from the stall helped TRIM during their first year (late 2013). Early in 2014 the Inverleith St Serf’s Church Kirk Session agreed to support TRIM, with retiring collections for TRIM during 2014, and food donations received by the stall going to TRIM for the foreseeable future. Half the stall’s 2014 profits will be given to TRIM.
This brings cash donations from Inverleith St Serf’s Church to TRIM to £1546.82 during 2014, going towards equipment, training and extra food purchases for the shop.
TRIM splits food donations between their foodbank and community shop. Accordingly the Inverleith St Serf’s Church congregation can use the stall to support third world producers (through purchases) and local causes (through donations).
Food donations range from tinned goods brought in from home to fairtrade items from the stall (e.g. pasta, rice, tea, fruit pots and much more). These donations are distributed right from the heart of the Muirhouse community, ensuring rapid and effective distribution to those who need them most and the link between the church and community shop has continued to grow.
The Goldenacre stall is now currently run by Graham Mackenzie – and supported by three generations of the Mackenzie family! – at Inverleith St Serf’s Church.
Goldenacre Fairtrade would be happy to discuss their innovative work with other churches, community organisations and local media.
More information about the Goldenacre Fairtrade nomination submission can be found here:
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