St. John the Baptist

Enroll in Faith Direct or call Faith Direct at 866-507-8757.
Your contribution will be withdrawn electronically and applied to the fund you select. No need to remember your checkbook.
Our Parish code is MD 300.

SJB’s annual Alternative Gifts Bazaar will be held in the Gym after the 5:00 PM Mass on Saturday, Dec 1, and Sunday, Dec 2, from 8:30 - 1:30 pm. Don’t miss this chance to purchase unique and meaningful gifts, sold in the spirit of Fair Trade, for family, friends, teachers, and coaches.  Support our Parish social-justice projects and local service agencies by purchasing gift cards from the Alternative Gift Catalog below.
 
Over the years this has been a great opportunity to learn about fair trade, parishioner supported organizations, and ways to get involved. If you have fair trade items for sale and would like to participate this year, please contact Cynthia Norris at socialconcerns@sjbcatholicchurch.com or 301-622-1122, ext 108 no later than Monday, November 26.

This year we are expanding the event to include local parishioner owned businesses. Would you like to support the SJB Community Fund and highlight your business and/or artistry at the same time? For a nominal donation to our parish Community Fund, you'll have a display space at the Fair.

Among the groups that will be selling crafts are:
• Just Haiti (www.justhaiti.org), founded by several people with ties to SJB, works with subsistence coffee growers in Haiti to bring their fair trade, shade grown, chemical free coffee to US consumers.  Through our “fair trade-plus” model of doing business, Just Haiti aims to build an equitable and fair partnership between coffee consumers in the United States and coffee growers in Haiti.  Our goals are for the growers to not only grow high-quality coffee but also to own – and profit from – all post-harvest operations required to export and sell their coffee.  The growers in Haiti receive the full value of their labor, and consumers in the US purchase high-quality coffee at a fair price, knowing that the Haitian families who produce the coffee are earning a just wage.
 
• Michael’s House (www.michaels-house.org), founded by former SJB weekend associate Fr. Michael Craig, is a locally based, non-profit, grassroots organization that serves the destitute and isolated elderly poor in the developing world. Proceeds from the sale of homemade crafts at our bazaar will benefit Michael’s House in Ethiopia, Uganda, Honduras, Rwanda, Malawi, Kenya and Togo.