6 March: Great Missenden (St Peter and St Paul Church and Great Missenden Church of England Combined School) from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

A wonderful opportunity for anyone who wants to think about care for creation in their church or school.

Join leading Christian theologians, environmental experts and members of other churches interested in how we live out our call to enjoy and care for Creation . . . and how we respond to the threats that imperil both the natural environment as a whole and, within that, the neighbours whom we are called to love.

The day will also include a Fairtrade "Big Brew," a marketplace and worship.

Keynote speakers include:

• Dave Bookless, A Rocha UK and author of "Planetwise"
• Paula Clifford, Christian Aid, and author of "Angels with Trumpets: The Church in a Time of Global Warming"
• Chris Sunderland, Founder of Earth Abbey and author of "The Dream That Inspired the Bible"
• Richard Weaver, Tearfund's senior policy officer on climate change and disasters

Workshops led by experts and practitioners include:

• presentations by churches and schools that have installed renewable energy
• opportunities for "Eco-Congregations" and "Eco-Schools" to share experiences
• a session on working with community groups and initiatives such as Transition Towns
• an energy advisor's "clinic" on easy energy saving for homes, churches and schools
• Revd. Professor Ian James on the science of climate change and answering questions related to climate
• the CEO of Traidcraft on Fair Trade and sustainability
• reflection on spirituality, community and reconnecting with the earth
• working with children and young people on environmental questions
• experiencing and constructing a "green" prayer walk
• a practical workshop on creating worship that includes environmental themes
• Richard Weaver with an explanation of what happened at Copenhagen and what the "big picture" is on climate change negotiations
• a road-map for campaigning on climate change in the year ahead

The marketplace will include stalls from agencies, church and community groups, environmental service providers and Traidcraft.

Paul Chandler, CEO of Traidcraft, will open our "Big Brew" as well as offering his workshop on Fair Trade and Sustainability.

The cost of the conference is £5, payable on the day. The fee includes coffee, tea and all workshop materials. Register using the form (below -- click on the title of this post to get the full post with the forms).

For further information, email maranda@ccow.org.uk or webmaster@grtmissenden.bucks.sch.uk, or ring 01235 850267.

Once again, we're encouraging everyone to join in "The Big Brew" during Fairtrade Fortnight. To join "The Big Brew" all you need to do is register and hold an event (called a "Big Brew") at which Fairtrade refreshments are served. Your event can be as simple as a special coffee after services or as elaborate as a village party! 

The Big Brew is a great way both to promote Fair Trade and to further the mission of your church. You can use it for outreach, to raise funds for a project or cause, to bring together groups that don't normally get to meet . . . . whatever best fits your interest. When you register, you get a free publicity pack with attractive materials to publicise your event. CCOW can also send you further materials about Fair Trade so that people learn more about its importance while they're having fun. Just let us know what you're doing and what you would like to be able to share with people.

To register, simply email CCOW to indicate your interest. We'll send you a registration form, and you're on your way. Register soon -- if you could let us know of your interest by 15 January, that would help to speed the processing of the materials.

If you'd like some ideas for your Big Brew, below is a list of some of the interesting things churches and schools have done in the past. Send us yours, too!

• Fair Trade/local meals -- great for showingcasing a wide range of Fair Trade and local foodstuffs . . . and for proving that it's possible for food to be both sustainable and delicious!

• A Fair Trade and local foods baking competition (people bring in cakes made with fairly traded and local ingredients)

• Offering "Fairtrade cuppas" to local shoppers either in your church or on a stall in a shopping precinct . . . always appreciated on a chilly morning! And you can offer information about Fairtrade and your church on the stall, as well

• A "Fairtrade tea dance" -- perhaps with a variety of different teas?

• A "Mad Hatter's [Fairtrade] Tea Party" -- with some of the organisers dressed as Alice in Wonderland and her friends

• A "Fairtrade Puppet Show" (there is a Punch and Judy show that does Fairtrade themes . . . or you can make up your own!) Great for combining education and fun.

• A Fairtrade tasting party with different stalls for different kinds of products -- go beyond coffee, tea and chocolate with different fruits, jams and biscuits. Does your church have a link with a particular area? Why not focus on that area's Fairtrade products!

• A favourite film . . . . with Fairtrade refreshments -- you could try showing a film with a Fairtrade theme, such as "Black Gold" . . . or one with an environmental theme, perhaps, to help link Fairtrade and sustainability? One Mothers' Union group even did a sing-alonga to a favourite film, with organisers dressed as old-fashioned cinema refreshment sellers bearing Fairtrade goodies.

• A Fairtrade children's tea party (Fairtrade biscuits, juices, fruits)

• Fairtrade refreshments at a concert

• A book club reading of the "No. 1  Ladies Detective Agency"  with Mma Ramotswe's favourite "redbush (rooibos) tea" (fairly traded, of course).

Join the Wave for climate justice

On 5 December, Christians from around the UK will come together in London to pray and march for climate justice.

The day begins with an ecumenical service at Westminster Central Hall, at which the Archbishop of Canterbury will deliver an address, and the Archbishop of Westminster, the President of the Methodist Conference, and the General Director of the Evangelical Alliance will lead worship. Agency partners from other countries will provide information about climate change's impacts and local activity on climate change in other parts of the world. There will also be activities for children, which are being provided by CAFOD.

After the service, participants are invited to join the Stop Climate Chaos march from Grosvenor Square to Westminster, which will culminate in a human "wave" encircling the Houses of Parliament at 3:00 pm.

CCOW supporters are then invited to join supporters from other agencies for "tea and cakes" at the Mothers' Union building (Mary Sumner House) on Tufton Street.

Large numbers of people from our area are attending "The Wave." CAFOD has organised coaches from Reading/Woodley/Maidenhead and Northampton/Milton Keynes/Luton, and the Coop/Oxfam have organised coaches from Oxford. There are also groups going together on the train. For full details, see the attached "Wave Q and A" sheet or contact CCOW.

On the weekend of October 16th to 18th, your church is invited to join millions of people around the world to ask for urgent action on poverty and climate change.
 

Stand Up and Take Action is a global movement supported by the United Nations Millennium Campaign, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (the White Band organisation) and Micah Challenge, the international Christian campaign against poverty. Each October since 2004, in locations from Australia to Peru to Zimbabwe, millions of people “stand up” and commit to fight poverty. Then they take action to request that their leaders do the same. Last year over 100 million people took part world wide.

Every person standing up makes a difference locally. And taken together, the millions of people standing make a powerful statement globally. This year, the numbers Standing Up and Taking Action will be given to world leaders at the vital climate negotiations coming up at Copenhagen in December and the Millennium Development Goal review in 2010.

For many Christians, the Stand Up campaign offers an opportunity to live and witness to our faith. To bring the needs of the world to God in prayer. To renew our commitment to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God. To stand in solidarity with brothers and sisters around the world. To offer a symbol of Christ's care for the poor. And to strengthen ourselves to keep speaking and acting - not just because the needs of the world demand it, but because a righteous and loving God cries out that his people stand up for justice and peace.

You can participate in this year's Stand Up by:

How to Stand and Be Counted

(1) To pre-register, go to www.standagainstpoverty.org and click on the button that says “Are you planning an event.” Fill in the registration form.

(2) At the event, ask everyone to stand.*The group, or a leader, can then read a pledge or prayer of commitment, and take whatever action you have decided on. Count the number of participants. If possible, take a picture of everyone involved.

(3) Immediately after the event, go back to the Stand Up website and upload your numbers and any pictures you wish to. Only materials uploaded by the end of 18 October can be counted, so speed is of the essence.

* For those of us for whom the act of physically standing is difficult, if not impossible, the symbolic act of Standing Up is interchangeable with other symbolic gestures such as raising a hand or holding up a banner with the Stand Up and Take Action message on it. It's the shared commitment that matters.

Over the summer, there has been much local activity in preparation for the UN's Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Some of the most original means of focusing attention on climate issues have come from the creative genius of Operation Noah supporters.  

On the seventh of July a larger-than-life-sized effigy of King Cnut visited the Baptist Church in Bonn Square, Oxford, on its way to the riverbank of the Thames at Westminster.  King Cnut famously (if perhaps apocryphally)  learned the limits of human power over the natural world when his command failed to stop the rising tide. The organisers of the event hoped to remind people that "halting climate change means accepting limits to human exploitation of the planet."

“Sea levels are rising and the G8 are in danger of behaving like modern day King Cnuts,” said organiser Simon Topping. “Human arrogance and greed are blinding world leaders to the radical changes needed to the global economy in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. Unless they accept that there are limits to consumption and limits to economic growth then we will not find a satisfactory solution to the crisis we all face."

Slightly earlier, on the 5th of July, a "Carnival Ark" filled with children in animal costumes had made its appearance at this year's Cowley Road Carnival, the "Carnival in the Park." Made out of biodegradable cardboard, it proclaimed "Noah had a plan to care for all living creatures. What's yours?" and called on bystanders to help protect the climate.

Arks have been abundant in Reading also: at the Forbury Fever festival in June, festival goers were asked to do origami arks with a petition to Gordon Brown. And Greening St John's author -- and founder member of the Reading CEL Group -- Joanna Laynesmith put together an Ark flower arrangement for the East Reading flower festival at St John's. Her accompanying text read: 

"The plants in this display were all organically grown in Reading and transported by bike. Some are wild flowers and some are cultivated. Some are for healing, some for eating and some are simply beautiful. They represent the bounty and generosity of God’s created world.This ark is a fairly traded toy from Sri Lanka belonging to a five-year-old in our congregation.

The windmill represents St John's PCC's recent decision to change our electricity supplier to Ecotricity renewable energy.

Christian Ecology Link have launched the Operation Noah campaign to protect our rich wildlife and the world's poorest people from climate change.  If greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed soon, there will be no summer sea ice on the Arctic before this ark's owner is eighteen, and before he is fifty, the number of climate change refugees . . . will exceed the combined populations of England, Germany and Italy (at the most conservative estimate).

In a time of climate crisis, Noah was 'a man who walked with God,' listened to the warnings and acted. Today we are all called to act as Noah did. "

Have a look at Joanna's blog for a picture of the display . . . and much good information on the journey of an Eco-Congregation.

On the 20th of April, Witney Area Fair Trade Action Group (WAFTAG) and CCOW co-sponsored a panel entitled "What Does Fair Trade Do?" at High Street Methodist Church in Witney.

The panel offered a chance to hear three people with first-hand experience of working on Fair Trade talk about how they saw Fair Trade working, and what it  does to assist producers in developing countries.

The first speaker was Alex Nicholls, University Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship at the Skoll Centre of Oxford University, author of Fair Trade: Market-Driven Ethical Consumption and non-executive director of Fair Trade fashion company People Tree.

The second speaker was David Bowman, non-executive director of Traidcraft, one of the UK's largest and best-known Fair Trade organisation.

Wendy Foster, the third speaker, then shared thoughts based on her years spent as a project consultant for the Kwetu Training Centre in Kenya, which produced Fairtrade honey and other sustainably developed and fairly traded products. A copy of Wendy's powerpoint presentation, which introduces the Kwetu project, can be found at the bottom of this post.

DfID is putting together a new White Paper on International Development, and is holding a consultation as part of the process.

The consultation document is available online at http://consultation.dfid.gov.uk and is open for comment until 27 May. There are also regional consultation events, including one in Southampton on 7 May and one in Leicester on 13 May. Click here for more information about these.

The document has an ambitious title: Eliminating World Poverty.  It has five main sections:

• Building our common future
• Global economic growth
• Climate change
• Fragile and conflict-affected countries
• International institutional reform

"Building our common future" is the introduction; each of the remaining sections includes a brief outline of DfID's thinking on the challenges involved in one key area, together with questions about DfID's response to which those taking part in the consultation can add their thoughts.

Downloadable notes on the main presentations at the DfID Consultation in Bristol on 8 April are at the bottom of this post.

For the past few weeks, Christians have been praying -- and advocating -- for the G20 to strive for justice.

Now, as the "London Summit" finishes, what has happened?

As the G20 "comes to town" next week, how can we make sense of the maelstrom of opinions, hopes and fears around the meeting? And what can we do to pray and express our hopes that any outcomes of the meeting will be ones that move the world towards the vision of God's Kingdom, a vision of love and justice?

Praying and Acting

Within a UK context, there are two major opportunities for prayer and action.

• "Put People First" is holding a service, march and rally on Saturday, 28 March. The service , which begins at 10:30 for 11:00 features the Bishop of London; Joel Edwards, International Director of Micah Challenge; Christine Allen, Executive Director of Progressio; and Fr Joe Komakoma, General Secretary of the Episcopal Conference, Zambia. Many other church and agency leaders will also be speaking and reading, and there will be worship music by Andy Flannagan. A tremendous opportunity to gather and pray for wisdom and discernment for those meeting . . . but also more broadly for God's justice, mercy and peace to flow through all deliberations and our own lives.

• Micah Challenge , the international coalition of Christian organisations campaigning on the Millennium Development Goals and seeking to engage the churches in issues of poverty and justice, has prepared the Rise Up resource to help us pray for the G20 meeting and more generally for a better world. This resource will be used by Christians in countries around the globe -- from Australia to Zambia. Join in! There's a special prayer for use this Sunday, 29 March, in churches. Can you see if your church could use it? 

Information and Opinion

Is the G20 legitimate? Or not? Should it be trying to reform the world's financial architecture? Or standing by to allow a more representative UN-based system to do the job? Should it try to relaunch the Doha round of trade talks to fight protectionism? Or would doing so imperil the economies of some of the world's poorest countries?