This month: Space Age St Albans - Promoting the Fairtrade habit - Revealing child poverty in Britain -

Space Age Bible exploration comes to St Albans

  For three weeks from 6th March, more than 1,000 St Albans schoolchildren, aged from eight to 11, will be exploring the Holy Land with the aid of modern e-learning technology.
  The children, from Sandringham, Skyswood, Sandridge, Wheatfields, Aboyne Lodge, Oakwood, Bernards Heath, St John Fisher and Fleetville Schools, will be visiting ‘The Emmaus Road Show’ – sited first at Fleetville School and then in the Sherwood Avenue car park near Marshalswick Baptist Free Church.
  The Emmaus Road Show, owned by a company called Bible Ventures and devised by St Albans resident Howard Roberts, comprises two specially adapted trailers.  The Emmaus Road Show regularly travels throughout the UK, attracting both youth and adult audiences, but this is the first time that it has visited the home town of the show’s designer.
  Visitors find themselves in a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. While they await transfer to the surface, they explore an ancient databank – the Bible – via animated charts and film clips.
  Having landed safely, they board an ‘aircraft’ video theatre for their onward flight to the Holy Land.  They see ‘in-flight’ Bible-related movies; then transfer to a ‘tour coach’ to view key biblical sites and scenes - of Galilee, the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem - in 3D.
  The whole event – which lasts some 90 minutes - meets the requirements of the National Curriculum relating to the need for children to understand religions’ sacred texts.
  In order to bring the Emmaus Road Show to St Albans, Marshalswick Baptist Free Church has attracted sponsorship from a charitable trust, along with Churches Together in Marshalswick and local churches including St Paul’s in Fleetville, St Mary’s Marshalswick and Hatfield Road Methodist.  In addition, Dagnall Street Baptist Church is supporting the visit to the show by children from Aboyne Lodge School.
  Not only is this a way of presenting Biblical stories in a modern context but it also a way for churches to build relationships with local schools.  It helps schools meet the requirements of the National Curriculum and brings the children into contact with the churches as they pursue their studies.
  During the three weeks or so that the Emmaus Road Show is in Fleetville and Marshalswick, a number of adult groups will also be experiencing the show during the evenings.
  For further details of the Emmaus Road Show -and to offer to help with the arrangements - contact Graham Clarke on 01727 857786.

By Robert Little.

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Fairtrade Fortnight runs, this year, from 6th to 19th March.

Promoting the Fairtrade habit

  The aim of Fairtrade Fortnight - the Fairtrade Foundation’s campaign - is to show how a small change in shopping habits can make a real difference to poverty as well as raise awareness of the vast numbers of Fairtrade products that are available
  According to the Fairtrade Foundation, the increased interest in the developing world - resulting from the MakePovertyHistory campaign, Live8 as well as the government’s and the media’s focus on Africa in 2005 - means that the time is ripe for boosting Fairtrade as a simple step that everyone can take to make a positive difference to producers’ lives.
  Harriet Lamb, director of the Fairtrade Foundation, explained: “We can get stuck in our ways but changing to Fairtrade can help change the world. If we all make Fairtrade our habit, we can play a part in enabling farmers and farm workers to end poverty in their own communities.”
  A MORI poll conducted in 2005 showed that 50 per cent of UK adults now recognise the ‘Fairtrade’ mark. Fairtrade retail sales are growing by some 40 per cent, year on year.  In 2004, these sales reached £140m but research shows that many of the people who are well disposed to Fairtrade are not buying Fairtrade goods habitually.
  Focus group research shows that this is partly because they buy other products through habit and, partly, because they are not aware of the growing range of Fairtrade products.
  “There are now over 1,100 Fairtrade products, from honey and mangoes to roses and cotton T-shirts,” said Lamb.  “It’s now easier than ever to find and buy items with the Fairtrade mark.”
  Britain is the biggest European Fairtrade market and all major supermarket chains, together with smaller stores, now sell Fairtrade products.
  The Fairtrade Foundation expects this year’s Fairtrade Fortnight to be promoted by hundreds of Fairtrade supporter network and campaign groups across the country.

From ‘Fair Comment’ magazine and supplied by Julia Clarke.

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Another ‘fact that should change the world’.

Revealing child poverty in Britain

  Britain - the world’s fourth largest economy - has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the industrialised world.  Nearly one in three British children live in poverty. That’s three times the number below the poverty line in 1970.  More than half of inner-London children live in poverty, in a city that has the highest income per head in Europe and the greatest number of millionaires.
  Children born into poverty are more likely to die in the first year of life, are more likely to die from childhood accidents, and will have shorter lives than children born to wealthier families.
  They are more likely to live in cramped homes with damp problems and lack of heating.  Poor children are more likely to be excluded from social activities like school trips and leisure services.  Young people living in persistent and severe poverty are more likely to have strained relationships with their parents and are less likely to be happy with their appearance and their lives as a whole.
  It is little wonder that children from the lowest income groups are three times more likely than children from the wealthiest families to suffer some kind of psychiatric problem.  The British Office of National Statistics reports that 16 per cent of children living in families with a weekly income of less than £100 have mental health problems, compared with some six per cent of children in families earning over £500 a week.
  According to Neera Sharma, of children’s charity Barnardo’s: “There are lots of children who take for granted such things as days out, holidays, trips to Pizza Hut and so on.
  “But there are lots of children who don’t have these things and that makes them feel socially excluded.  Many of these children often care for a disabled parent or a parent with mental illness.  These things can lead to bullying at school and have an impact on their mental health.”
If children are diagnosed with a mental illness, the chances are that the care they receive will not be adequate.  According to government-funded research, up to a quarter of British teenagers with mental health problems are receiving care deemed ‘inappropriate’ by their own doctors.  Total spending on child and adolescent mental health in the UK is some £240m a year - just seven per cent of the adult mental health budget.
  As well as essentials such as warm clothing and a healthy diet, children born into poverty may be deprived of opportunities to work their way towards a better life.
  Statistically, poor children are likely to grow into poor adults.  They are at a greater risk of unemployment and low pay when they grow up.  If they leave school without qualifications, they are three times less likely to receive job-related training.
  If they have a mental disorder, they are ten times more likely to have been in trouble with the police and more likely to continue to have problems in later life: up to half of all adult mental disorder is first diagnosed in childhood.
  According to Martin Barnes, director of the Child Poverty Action Group, many people still believe that poverty is not a problem in Britain - and that makes the problem harder to address.
  “The poverty of today is often forced behind closed doors, driven there by stigma, isolation and embarrassment,” said Barnes.  “The personal and economic costs are real and increasing but, instead of outrage and urgency, there is widespread indifference and complacency.
  “Poverty in Britain exists not because it is a poor country but because it is an unequal country.  And dealing with that inequality poses a complex problem for any government brave enough to attempt it.”
   Britain is now twice as unequal as it was in 1977 and the gap between rich and poor grew markedly over the 1990s.  The bottom ten per cent of Britain’s population get just three per cent of the income, while the top ten per cent get more than a quarter.
  The British Government has acknowledged that child poverty is a massive problem and, in 1999, Tony Blair committed to eradicating it within a generation.  Gordon Brown has said that the problem is a ‘scar on the soul of Britain’.
Increasing income is one important factor to solving the poverty problem, as is access to good-quality public services like transport, education and social services.

Abridged from ‘50 facts that should change the world’ by Jessica Williams (ISBN 1-84046-547-6) and supplied by Aneurin Little.