Sarah J spoke with Tim Hunt

There are all sorts of social projects. We try and get children who have leprosy into schools. A lot of schools in countries such as India and Bangladesh offer scholarships for poor children. We would help them get in and then of course they tell their friends and their friends would then apply for these school places.

There are all sorts of social things that we're doing behind the scenes which really do make a difference.

Sarah: I know that you also engage people who have been affected by leprosy in making craft materials that are then sold here in the west. Tell me a bit about that.

Tim: We're what we call TLM trading; that's the trading arm of The Leprosy Mission. We sell a range of gifts that people can buy here in the UK.

A number of our products have been produced by groups who have employed leprosy affected people and sometimes people with polio or disabled people. Some of these artisans are amazing.

We sell them from our catalogue in the UK. We say look if you buy these products, you're actually creating livelihoods. There are some lovely products, especially the wooden engraved ones and wooden ornaments. There can be bracelets and some lovely handbags, things like that. They've got to a really high standard. They just can't find outlets for them in their local market; so we buy for them.

Sarah: Have you got some special Christmas stock in?

Tim: With the recession we've worked hard at getting a range of stocking filler products at less than a fiver this year. Our customers love chocolates so we work with Divine who are a Fair-trade chocolate supplier and our best selling chocolates are white chocolates with strawberry truffles; they're yummy and are available for about £6.

The other thing that's going down really well is that we also publish our own books and we publish a series of what we call gift books, which is just like hard backed books the size of a CD case and they're filled with nice statements either from the Bible or proverbs or sayings. One is called A Bouquet of Blessings; another one is called A Bouquet of Promises; or Peace Be with You. These are just lovely thoughts that you can give to someone that last forever and they're only £5.

The other one is Christmas cards; we do a load of Christmas cards. We've got Bible verses inside. They're lovely cards and they sell really well.

The other area that is doing extremely well is gifts for life. This is where you don't know what to get someone; you perhaps get them a virtual gift. I'm sure most of the listeners have heard of the concept; with us you can buy a pair of sandals. You can buy two pairs of sandals for £10. You obviously don't get the sandals, but you can say to the person you've given the gift to, that rather than giving you a gift we bought two pairs of sandals for a leprosy affected person. I say sandals because these are very carefully crafted shoes to fit disfigured feet. It's extremely difficult to make them. We also have to jazz them up so that people can't tell that they're leprosy shoes.

Sarah: If people want to look at the full range of gifts that you've got on offer, how can they do that?

Tim: There's two ways. The best one is to visit the website, because on the website there's hundreds of products that we reduce often by as much as 50%; so you can get some bargains on the website. You can also give us a call on 0845 1662253 and we'll gladly send you our latest catalogue.

Sarah: What's the cut-off point where you're guaranteed that you'll get a delivery before Christmas?

Tim: We say to get your order in for about 13th December. If you're a bit late we'll probably be able to get it through, but 13th December is when you're going to be ok. If you want advent products, because we do Fair-trade chocolate advent calendars and we also do lovely Christian based advent candles that you can burn down; do get those orders in around late November, so you get them in time.

Sarah: Come January you also have January sales don't you?

Tim: Yes, lots of bargains in our January sale. That catalogue normally arrives first or second week of January and the website goes live normally 7th-8th January.