Travel Diary
Old books may bring a whole new chapter to Punwani School
On a recent trip to Kenya I visited Undugu Offices in Nairobi. Undugu were Shared Interest’s first African borrower and we have worked together for 11 years now. As with many African fair trade organisations they run several social programmes alongside their fair trade business.
In my opinion one of the most important is their education [...]
The universal language of coffee
From Hugo Villela, Regional Development Executive;
I’m writing to you from Chiapas, the southern department of Mexico, an area where the majority of the population comes from Mayan ethnic groups. Here the Catholic Church has undertaken a lot of work to develop the self sufficiency of the indigenous people, by organising them into Church based communities. [...]
The Importance of Tortillas!
From Hugo Villela, Regional Development Executive;
In the Mayan tradition the human being is made of corn, the corn is the basis of the life here in Mesoamerica, the region which used to be the Mayan territory (encompassing Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and northern Costa Rica).
In the Chiapas Mountains you can see many corn [...]
Surviving Campaign Coffee
“I’m not one for putting letters after my name but if I was I’d have to put SCC after it, Survivor of Campaign Coffee.”
These were the opening words of John Bell at the London Diocese Fairtrade Conference last Saturday. The event is an annual conference, which this year had the title ‘Transforming Lives’, and aimed [...]
It just doesn’t seem fair
Perhaps one way of solving this dilemma is to continue raising the profile of fairtrade so that farmers can increase the amount of produce to be sold into the fairtrade market. But how long will that take? And what should be done about it in the meantime?
The Secluded South East of Costa Rica
Our first producer visit in Costa Rica was to APPTA, a group of remotely based communities growing cocoa and bananas. We made the day-long journey to the Talamanca region of Costa Rica with our colleague Hugo, stopping in Limon to sample the Caribbean twist on the country’s favourite dish Gallo Pinto. With two hours to [...]
‘SEWING’ THE SEEDS OF FAIR TRADE IN TANZANIA FOR SHARED INTEREST
After 27 hours non-stop travel, two 6-hour stopovers and 3 different planes, I finally arrived to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. As always the interminable journey had been worth it to be back on African soil. And anyway, I had met up with Rachel Ngondo, our African Regional Development Executive, at Nairobi so I’d had [...]
Our time in and around Achuapa
The next leg of our Nicaraguan trip took us to Achuapa, a small town to the West of Esteli. The co-operatives in this area produce organic and fair trade sesame seed oil, and export to commercial buyers, such as The Body Shop for use in cosmetics.
We had the opportunity to sit in on ‘La Asemblea’ [...]
Our first meeting in Nicaragua – UCA Miraflor, Esteli
After a long day in the car, Andrea and I arrived in Esteli in the North of Nicaragua. We were travelling with Julian, the Country Director for Raleigh International, a British organisation working in the region.
Our first producer meeting of the trip was UCA Miraflor (Union de Cooperativas Agropecurias de Miraflor) a Union of agricultural [...]
Locals supporting Locals
An issue that comes up time and time again within debates of fair trade and local produce is that of ‘Do I buy local or do I buy fair trade?’ My approach to this has always been if it can be fair trade buy that, so things like tea, coffee and flowers (all of which [...]