The Real Advent Calendar has reached the shop shelves and Bradford Cathedral’s Fairtrade stall for the third year running, bringing the true story of Christmas back to the UK by featuring a copy of the Nativity, illustrated by Sophie Allsopp, inside the calendar.
Though the calendar can be bought from a number of shops including Tesco and CLC (Christian Literature Crusade) Bookshops, Bradford Cathedral are also stocking the calendar to order, but the deadline for orders is this Sunday.
The Cathedral are asking for the £3.99 payment before they order the calendar for you and the calendars will be available to collect at the Cathedral’s Fairtrade stall after the Sunday morning service or from their office between 9am and 3pm.
With 36% of 5 – 7 year olds not knowing whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, and less than 12% of adults knowing the full nativity story and 51% claiming that the birth of Jesus is irrelevant at Christmas, this Christmas starts with Christ campaign is vital to saving the real meaning of the holiday.
Launched in mid-September, this Real Advent Calendar is the UK’s only Fairtrade charitable calendar with 500,000 sold in the past three years.
David Marshall, from The Meaningful Chocolate Company, said, “Recent surveys show that knowledge of the Christmas story is fading.
“The Real Advent Calendar is part of a campaign which hopes to reverse this trend by finding new ways to share the story.
“By buying this Advent Calendar children, parents and Godparents can share the Christmas story throughout December.”
Each calendar comes with the classic 24 Fairtrade Belgian chocolate shapes, one for each day of Advent, but also features a line from the Christmas story behind each window and a 32-page Christmas story book, illustrated by Sophie Allsopp which includes a number of fun activities.
From the sales of the calendar, the Meaningful Chocolate Company is hoping to donate £15,000 to help fund a baby clinic in Kenya where many live in poverty without access to clean water and basic sanitation.
The Funzi Clinic in Kenya provides ante- and post-natal care, immunisations, baby weighing, growth monitoring and general health care 24 hours a day to hundreds of mothers and their babies in the local community.
The Meaningful Chocolate Company will also send donations from the calendar sales to support overseas farmers through Traidcraft Exchange which sells the UK’s largest range of Fairtrade products, using the profits to run life-changing development projects and campaigns to enforce trade justice.
Launching this year's calendar, Diane Louise Jordan, TV presenter formerly for Blue Peter and now for Songs of Praise, said, “Not only is the calendar educational and made from Fairtrade chocolate but it’s a great opportunity to raise funds to help equip and support The Funzi and Bodo Trust baby clinic in Kenya.”
The image on the right shows Diane Louise Jordan.
In 2013 the Meaningful Chocolate Company donated more than £18,000 to the Children’s Society and, in 2014, donated another £18,000 to equip the baby clinic in Funzi.
In total, the Company has donated more than £140,000 to charitable development and education projects, using sales from their advent calendars and their Real Easter Eggs, developed in 2010 – the only chocolate Egg to explain the story of Easter.
Retailers stocking the calendar include larger Tesco stores, Traidcraft, Eden.co.uk, Shared Earth, CLC Bookshops and a number of cathedrals at an RRP of £3.99.
The Calendar will cost £3.99 each. To order a calendar from Bradford Cathedral, and to make the payment needed before it can be ordered for you, please visit the Cathedral’s office between 9am and 3pm or call: 01274 777720. Please be aware that the Cathedral does not have card payment facility, so payments will have to be made in the Cathedral itself. A second visit to the Cathedral will be needed to collect the Real Advent Calendar either from the Fairtrade stall after the Sunday morning service or from the office between 9am and 3pm.
For more details about the calendar and for information on where else the calendar can be bought, please visit: www.realadvent.co.uk
For more information on the Funzi Clinic, please visit their website: www.funzi.org.uk
For more information on Traidcraft Exchange, please visit their website: www.traidcraft.co.uk