This month: Making poverty history: the trade justice campaign - Prayers for Christian Aid Week - Challenge for Premiership defenders

Christian Aid Week, 15th to 21st May 2005.

Making poverty history: the trade justice campaign

The UK government is committed to making 2005 a year when poverty is on the international agenda.  To tackle poverty it must address the injustices in world trade. Christian Aid Week this year asks churches to call for trade justice.
Louisa Elias Mahahele works on a sugar plantation in Mozambique, earning enough to feed her family.  Her job is one of the thousands that have been created since the Mozambique government helped its sugar industry by attracting investment to it.  It set the price for imported sugar, most of which comes from rich countries where the industry is subsidised. This set price means that the locally produced sugar is able to compete with imports.
But Mozambique is an exception.
Other poor countries are prevented from helping vulnerable industries and farmers.  Rich countries and international institutions that lend poor countries money force governments to accept free-trade policies.
In Ghana, thousands of farmers have been forced to give up farming because they are no longer able to make a living selling their produce.
Kofi Eliasa used to be a tomato farmer.  He now works 12 hours a day in a quarry, breaking rocks to make gravel.  He struggles to earn enough to feed his family and send his children to school.
In exchange for loans, Ghana was forced to open up its markets to international trade and take away the government help given to farmers such as Kofi.
This is the same for other poor countries across the world.  The result is that millions of people now face an uncertain future as they lose the means to make a living.
Free trade means that governments may not interfere in the marketplace, and all traders - from rich and poor countries alike - must face each other in open competition.
This gives the poorest no chance.
To begin to make a decent living for their families they need some help from their governments to support their industries - that is, they need trade justice, not free trade.
This is why Christian Aid is campaigning for trade justice, not free trade.
The campaign is informed by the biblical vision of a just world where the needs of the poorest people are met.
To compete in today's global marketplace, poor farmers and traders need special help from their governments until they are strong enough to manage without it.

From Christian Aid.

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Prayers for Christian Aid Week

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Challenge for Premiership defenders

May has become a time of migration for most of the pampered millionaires playing football in the Premiership.  Once the last ball has been kicked for the season, they head for the Caribbean and Marbella to ‘chill out’ in the sun.
Missing from their numbers this year, however, are two of football’s more rugged characters: Linvoy Primus, of Portsmouth, and Darren Moore, of West Bromwich Albion.
Their appearances are deceptive.  On the pitch they are big, strong, uncompromising defenders.  Yet the pair are committed Christians and the founders of a charity called ‘Faith and Football’, which aims to raise funds for underprivileged children in three continents.
After two summers in which they have paid their own way to Nigeria and India to coach and preach in the back streets of Ibadan and Mumbai, they are starting this season’s break with their most adventurous project yet.
Primus and Moore are leading a group of fundraisers on a sponsored walk of the Great Wall of China, hoping to generate thousands of pounds to fund a school in Nigeria and a new school and medical centre on the outskirts of Goa.
“It’s going to be a difficult challenge,” said Primus.  “Some of the walking is pretty tough but it is the sort of project that captures people’s imaginations and the adventure sounded appealing to us.”
Their partnership began when they played together for Portsmouth in 2002.  Seeing the lack of direction in the young people of Paulsgrove, they set up a league there on Wednesday nights to give the children something to do.  Encouraged by that success, Moore recently established a community league in the Handsworth district of Birmingham.
The pair also lend their names and practical help to church workers overseas.
As yet, they have been unable to recruit any other Premiership footballers to their cause but Primus hopes that, at a time when the reputation of footballers has been sullied by off-the-field stories, he and Moore can do their bit to restore it.
He said: “Football needs some good role models.  A lot of players do charity work at some level but it is always the bad stories that makes the headlines.  I hope we can make some players realise that there is more to life than the game on Saturday afternoons.”

This article, by Graham Otway, was first published in The Times and was supplied by Steve Edmondson.