Scottish Charity Leads the Way- Sound Ideas Make Life Easier
Scottish Charity Leads the Way-
Sound Ideas Make Life Easier
A family trust running an Aberdeen-based charity has made life a lot better for Rwandan tea farmers and Tanzanian tea factory workers. The charity wants to make life sustainable for 16,000 smallholder farmers. The family trust was established in 2007 and has so far distributed £142 million to charitable causes. The Foundation has been working in east Africa since 2012 and has seen rural lives transformed, with some 60,000 small farmers seeing their income trebled.
Fair Trade
This intervention by the venture charity has helped to end the exploitation of tea growers by large tea companies. The small farmers were producing the family food crop to feed the farm family and the tea was the cash crop for everything else. Under the old system they could not save, plan ahead or deal with emergencies. Now the 6,000 farmers in southern Rwanda will supply a tea factory employing 2,000 people and at Rugabano, in the west. While in Tanzania, the Foundation has allied with a big company to help 3,500 farmers and create 4,000 factory jobs.
A Fair Deal
Well as regular readers of this blog know that I have definite fondness for a brew of tea myself and I think as I sit in my centrally heated home by the sea I don’t have to drink the cheapest tea and I’m very happy to hear of people getting paid properly for their labour and there still being a commercial path to tread. That way everyone is better off. And if you want to be better off and drink tea then look no further. The Portmeirion collection is a joy to behold and pleasure to drink from and naturally there is a few bob off. Quite a few in fact!
