Fair Trade Gifts for the Holidays

At my parish, we have just ordered a consignment of Fair Trade craft items from Catholic Relief Services. My Social Concerns Committee will hold a craft sale at the end of October so people can do some Christmas shopping with a conscience. We are not doing this to raise money, but rather, to raise awareness of Fair Trade crafts, coffee and chocolate.

The sale will literally help the artisans help themselves up and out of poverty, and with dignity.

As American consumers, we can use our purchases to help people who are poor around the world lift themselves, their families, and their communities up and out of poverty. I think the key is that Catholic Relief Services is on the ground in communities around the world, helping people learn better farming methods, gain money management skills, establish schools, etc. CRS eliminates the middle man, bringing gifts, chocolate, coffee, etc., direct from the artisans and farmers to us, the consumer, and guaranteeing that the artisans and farmers get a living wage.

I have personally bought Fair Trade gifts for all of my out-of-town relatives for four years now, and everyone is very happy with the quality. The Divine Chocolate is wonderful (and the women of my family are connoisseurs). Fair Trade coffee and teas are available in stores all around my town (Target, Safeway, Trader Joe's, Peet's Coffee & Tea, etc).

The Catholic Relief Services Fair Trade website explains it all very well: http://www.crsfairtrade.org/

If you want to hold a gift, chocolate or coffee sale yourself, it is very, very easy. The CRS website has step-by-step instructions with beautiful flyers and posters to help you promote your sale.

If you want to do some Christmas shopping for yourself, you can buy products online at the CRS Fair Trade website.

Catholic Relief Services Brings Help to Haiti

Generous contributions from Catholics across the country to Catholic Relief Services are helping thousands of Haitians after the devastating earthquake on January 12th.

Catholic Relief Services has provided food and other emergency supplies to more than 90,000 people through two large sites and parish distribution sites across Port-au-Prince. Catholic Relief Services medical teams are treating 300 per day.

For more information on Catholic Relief Services relief efforts in Haiti as well as prayer resources, educational resources, and information on how you can help with the long-term rebuilding process, go to www.crs.org.

For a beautiful prayer in solidarity with our Haitian brothers and sisters, visit: http://education.crs.org/resources/prayer-after-eq-haiti.pdf

Catholic Relief Services is the global outreach arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They do great and lasting work for social justice and charity. A really effective organization!

Catholic Relief Services: Please Write Your Congressperson!

Please write your member of Congress on a number of hot topics.

Check current action alerts at: http://tinyurl.com/crs-action-center

This request comes from Catholic Relief Services in coordination with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Many items of upcoming legislation have moral dimensions, e.g. arms control, global poverty, immigration reform.

The website of CRS is sooooo easy to use -- will only take you 5 minutes to send your own representatives an email. If you are unfamiliar with an issue, all the policy statements and summaries are right there so you can understand WHY the Bishops' have a particular position.

The Bishops always apply Catholic doctrine to current issues -- they are not partisan. Their faith is informing their politics, not the other way around!

I just sent an email to my Congressperson regarding international nuclear arms control and global poverty.

Microlending Really Helps People Climb Up Out of Poverty

Microlending means providing hard working people in developing countries and the USA a few hundred dollars to help them start or improve a tiny business. Their own hard work can bring them and their whole community up and out of poverty, with dignity and self esteem.

All microloans are administered on the ground by charities who also provide money management training, literacy classes, and so on. Your microloan is not a "hand out"; you go into business with the person.

Yes, the economy is bad, but you can start with just $25. And you get it back (that's why it's called micro-LENDING).

An excellent agency is Kiva: http://www.kiva.org/

You can check out my investments at the links below. At the webpage, click on "loans" to see the loans made to groups around the globe.

"Debbie's Family" are my loans in lieu of Christmas presents -- my family wanted to get away from the materialism of Christmas shopping last year.

http://www.kiva.org/lender/debbie7735

JustFaith2 are the investments of my JustFaith group; in the JustFaith program, I first learned how very effective microlending can be. Catholic Relief Services highly recommends it.

http://www.kiva.org/team/st_charles_borromeo_just_faith_ii

About the photo: Kahooza John Bosco is the leader of his lending group in Ibanda. He is a very hardworking and friendly man. He is 38 years old and married with 2 children, both of whom are in primary school; he also takes care of 2 dependants. He has had a retail shop in the Nyarukika trading centre for 15 years, where he is able to make 120,000 as profits a week. This is mostly attributed to the use of the loans that enabled him to have a variety of items in the shop. In the future, John Bosco would want to sell wholesale so that he could sell more and consequently have a happy and united family. He is seeking for a loan to be able buy more products for his shop so as to avoid shortages.

Socially Just Christmas Shopping Ideas

You can act on the Catholic Social Doctrine of solidarity with people around the planet by making purchases direct from farmers and artisans, ensuring that they receive a living wage from the sale of their products. Fair Trade programs also help farmers with sustainable farming methods, so you are also contributing to the Catholic Social Doctrine of caring for God's creation, too! And the Catholic Social Doctrines of the workers' rights and support of families also apply. You are really following in the footsteps of Jesus with your purchases. For the past two years, I have bought all gifts for out of state relatives from fair trade agencies -- the quality is very good. The "Divine" chocolate brand is superb.

Equal Exchange (http://www.equalexchange.coop/) offers fairly traded coffee, tea, chocolate and snacks, supporting small farmer co-ops using sustainable farming methods.

Oxfam America Unwrapped (www.oxfamamericaunwrapped.com) makes it easy to give a donation in someone’s name; let’s face it, our adult relatives don’t need another fruitcake and this way we do not generate a lot of wrapping paper for landfills.

Ten Thousand Villages (www.tenthousandvillages.com) offers delightful, handcrafted products from artisans around the world (jewelry, journals, soaps, toys).

Alter Eco Fair Trade (www.altereco-usa.com) offers fair trade and organic foods (coffee, grains, teas, olive oils, chocolate) while supporting small farmers who are preserving local agricultural biodiversity.

-- Courtesy of the Diocese of Oakland, Social Justice Resources webpage

Catholic Campaign Against Global Poverty

“Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” -- Matthew 25:40

The goals of the Catholic Campaign Against Global Poverty:

1. Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty

2. Achieve universal primary education

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

4. Reduce child mortality

5. Improve maternal health

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

8. Develop a global partnership for development

Learn more about the Catholic Campaign Against Global Poverty, sponsored by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops & Catholic Relief Services, at: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/globalpoverty/