IT all started in church, says Fiona Buchanan. “We did campaigns training recently where we identified where our passion or commitment comes from,” says Christian Aid Scotland’s Campaigns and Advocacy Coordinator. “And I have a sense it came from church – I can’t pin it down but I think hearing the stories of mission partners and different organisations that work for justice and equality, that is probably where it comes from – as well as from my parents, who were very much committed to it as well.”
The church in question is Carrick Knowe in Edinburgh, to which Fiona has belonged all her 37 years. She has also been organist and choir director and has run the Girlguiding unit all her adult life, and was ordained as an elder when she was 28.
“It has always been part of my life,” she says. “It was very much the sense of growing up in a community, and still being part of that community.