Premium coffee and former prostitutes will help CMS promote Fair Trade at CMS Summer School from this Saturday.

CMS are supplying Fair Trade coffee and carry bags throughout the KCC Katoomba site.

The bags that CMS are distributing to Summer School attendees are handmade by former prostitutes in India.

The Fair Trade movement hopes to offer a fair price for goods from developing countries, rather than the crippling low prices often sought by western buyers, which ensure poor suppliers remain poor and never have the chance to climb out of poverty.

The bags are produced by Freeset Bags, a business established in 1999 by a New Zealand couple Kerry and Annie Hilton.

The Hilton’s non-profit business, located on the fringes of Calcutta’s largest red-light district, gives the women of the area something they have long been denied - the option of leaving the sex trade.

“One of the sayings we have at CMS is ‘let your light shine'," says Associate General Secretary of CMS-NSW Malcolm Reid.

“Ordering our conference bags from Freeset is a simple way to put faith into action.

"We know Freeset is run by Christians, so we are sure they have opportunity to preach the gospel in words and action to the women who produce the bags and their families. We want to support them in this great ministry,” Mr Reid says.

Coffee lovers have cause to celebrate

The coffee that will be consumed at CMS Summer School, whether espresso-quality or instant tea and coffee, will be supplied by Tribes and Nations.

“Fair Trade is a means to make meaningful shopping choices which impact the poor,” says Grant Murray from Tribes and Nations, a distributor of Fair Trade products.

“It may be the simple act of ‘paying the workman what he or she deserves’ by choosing Fair Trade certified products, or investing in groups that do grassroots work where the poor are under extreme pressure.”

Mr Murray says even small shopping choices can make a massive change for the world's poor.

"It has been said that if the Fair Trade tea price was paid today to all tea suppliers in Sri Lanka, tomorrow we could halt our overseas aid to them with no ill effects," he says.

“Tribes and Nations is about seeing our brother in need and doing something about it.”

The Tuesday evening session at CMS Summer School will focus on urban areas of the world such as mega-cities where countless millions, often the poorest of the world, languish without knowledge of the gospel.

Program details can be found at the CMS website.