The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

1/2/2017

Big Brew and Traidcraft

Big Brew Day Sunday
March 5th 2017

This year Traidcraft is focusing on the needs of farming families whose livelihoods have been devastated by climate change. The money we raise will help these families to gain the skills they need to grow more and earn more, allowing them to access healthcare, send their children to school, build a functional home and simply have enough to feed their families.

There will be plenty to do in the Crypt Room after the 10.30 service! As well as enjoying a cup of Fairtrade tea or coffee you can buy a cake from the cake stall, visit the Traidcraft stall, play the chicken guessing game and have a coffee tasting session. In addition, the children have made some beautiful decorations so there will be a chance to admire them.

Please give generously to help some of the poorest people in the world.
Donations of home made cakes or biscuits will be accepted with gratitude:   [email protected]

So What does Traidcraft do?

Child Labour
 “My father never went to school and neither did my mother – it is important that I stay and finish so I can help them.”  Mohammed Fazan Kahn India

India is home to over 70 million child-workers and many of these children work in the home-based craft industry. Parents are forced, out of desperation, to make their children work because they need the money.

But our project team are working hard to stop this happening and make a big impact in the fight against child labour. Our project is working at a local level to develop and test a model designed to eradicate child labour. This has included supporting bridge schools to give children a route back into formal education.

The project is benefiting around 15,000 people and the knowledge gained will also be shared on a wide scale.

JEWEL
Jute: Empowering Women, Ensuring Livelihoods
               
Traidcraft has been working in the jute sector in Bangladesh for many years, with jute farmers and with jute businesses.

JEWEL works with women who provide a vital but invisible service to the jute supply-chain, ‘retting’ – the process of separating jute fibres from stalks after harvesting.  These women face multiple deprivations, including hazardous working conditions, poverty wages and gender-discrimination.  JEWEL works with them to form strong democratically-run groups through which they can transform their terms-of-trade and diversify their incomes.  It deploys an innovative approach to women’s empowerment which takes the crucial but unusual step of engaging directly with men. 

JEWEL is a four year programme of work that builds on the learning and experience our Bangladesh team have gained from successfully implementing numerous projects across the country.  It is generously supported by the Big Lottery Fund.

           
EqualiTEA
 “We have full faith in the work Traidcraft is doing. We know we can make a better future for our children.”    Abu Hanif Bangladesh

Our EqualiTEA programme works with smallholder tea growing families living in rural and often very isolated areas. Through a combination of technical training, encouraging tea growers to work together and providing a vital support network, the project team are working hard to transform lives and make the tea sector profitable for even the most disadvantaged families.

We’ve been working to expand our efforts in India and keep reaching more smallholder tea growers. In Bangladesh, however, our work is more pioneering – tea growing is relatively new to Bangladeshi farmers and there is a growing domestic market. We initially set up around 1,000 new tea growers in Bangladesh, but we’re now expanding the programme to help even more smallholder farmers earn a fair income in the tea sector.

This programme is benefitting around 170,000 people.

Sustainable Farms, Sustainable Futures           
Traidcraft’s ‘Sustainable Farms, Sustainable Futures’ project works with 4,000 cotton farming households in south-west Odisha, India. 

The districts where we work experience some of the highest levels of poverty in India.  The farmers participating in the project are from disadvantaged tribal and low-caste communities.  We are working with them to support the adoption of women-orientated, sustainable and diversified agriculture to improve food security and increase incomes.

The project’s foundation is the formation of village-level farmer co-operatives and self-help groups (SHGs).  Working collaboratively in collective organisations enables the farmers to access services, training and new markets.  The project has a strong focus on women’s empowerment and increasing recognition of the critical but often invisible agricultural work that women do.

‘Sustainable Farms, Sustainable Futures’ is a four year project that builds on Traidcraft’s extensive experience of working with Indian cotton farmers.  The project is generously supported by a grant from the Big Lottery fund.

These examples were chosen from the South East Asia section of their website.  Traidcraft also work in many other places around the world. Visit
www.traidcraft.co.uk to find out more.