ELEPHANT poo notebooks, thunder-making machines and ornaments made from recycled coke cans – Oxford’s Fairtrade at St Michael’s shop is an Aladdin’s Cave of goods.

Now, the woman who has managed the shop, which helps support some of the world’s poorest producers by giving them a fair deal, for 10 years is reluctantly handing over the reins.

Gilli Robbins, 65, was one of the first volunteers when the store opened in the basement at St Michael at the Northgate Church in Cornmarket Street in 2003.

Before that, Mrs Robbins had spent more than a decade travelling around the developing world with her husband Marcus.

A trained midwife, she worked in orphanages, while he was a tree scientist with Oxford University.

The experience persuaded her of the value of a system that could give some of the world’s poorest people a decent living, rather than rely on handouts.

She said: “We saw people struggling to make an existence because they couldn’t get their coffee or crafts into the First World.

“I saw people who worked harder than anyone here, who had no free schools, and if their children got sick they couldn’t take them to a hospital. I thought being a midwife would really help, but in Nicaragua even if you deliver a woman’s baby, 40 per cent of babies die within their first year because of healthcare problems.

“I realised I could do far more working here in Fairtrade.”

Fairtrade International launched the Fairtrade Certification Mark in 2002 to promote the idea in the developed world.

The next year, a Peruvian woman living in Oxford called Judith Candor-Vidal had the idea to open a Fairtrade shop in Oxford, and asked Mrs Robbins for her help.

Mrs Candor-Vidal asked her neighbour, who happened to be the rector of St Michael’s, if he knew of a space they could use and he suggested the basement under his church.

As manager of the shop, she also promoted Fairtrade to the whole city, joined national campaigns and petitioned governments to change trade law.

Feng Ho, who is one of the volunteers at the shop, said: “She has masterminded all the non-food buying, at any one time maintaining friendly relationships with up to 70 different suppliers and somehow memorising all the details about them and their products.

“She has kept the shop looking consistently fabulous with beautiful displays that cause new customers and old to pause on the threshold in wonder.

“She has imposed miraculous order on impossibly large quantities of stock squeezed into impossibly small storage spaces. She will be a hard act to follow.”

Mrs Robbins stepped down in May, but is still teaching new volunteers the ropes.