St Finnbarr’s Vestry have bought 90Kg of Kilombero White Rice from Just Trading Scotland, who deal directly with Malawian farmers. This is what is called The 90Kg Rice Challenge.

JTS say: “The 90kg Rice Challenge runs throughout the whole year and is the perfect social enterprise activity for your school, church or community group covering a range issues which are prevalent in today’s society including Fairtrade, Sustainability, Social Enterprise and Citizenship. Over 800 schools, churches and community groups have completed this already – so why not join them? It is a fun and engaging project with excellent learning outcomes to promote Fairtrade, Sustainability and Citizenship. It’s easy to organise and comes with an educational Challenge Pack, we have one for schools and one for churches, which feature plenty of information, lesson plans (or sermon outlines and prayers), ideas, promotional materials, recipes and activities to teach participants about Fairtrade which will be sent to you along with your 90 x 1kg bags of delicious Great Taste award winning rice.”

Anna and I have tried the rice and confirm that it does indeed have a “Great Taste“.  The rice is available in 1Kg bags at £3 each. Please contact Anna or James if you are able to use or sell a few bags, whilst at the same time helping directly farmers in a part of the world that is facing huge problems just at the moment in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai.

90kg is the amount of rice a farmer in Malawi has to sell to enable him to send a child to secondary school for a year and so we can see that our participation can directly help to provide a better life for those in some of the poorest communities in Malawi, through the opportunity of education.