The last few months have been reflective ones at Just Change. We have spent time thinking about our growth over the last few years, and planning for the future. We were lucky to have Sajan and his family with us (Sajan played a pivotal role in helping to set up the Just Change India Producer Company in 2006) to help us through this process. We have 'benchmarked' for some years now, and having stabilised our business processes, we look forward to expanding and moving forward over the next few years. This issue of the newsletter shares stories from JC Kerala, JCUK and the newest member of the family, JC Nagapattinam! JC India
Bridge (and houses!) on the river Chaliyar  Our last issue had the story of the Ambittampotty VCS on the banks of the Chaliyar river in Kerala. The women of 3 SHGs successfully run their Just Change consumer society, and celebrated the 4th anniversary of their shop some months ago. Inspired by their enthusiasm and spirit, AMS (Adivasi Munnetra Sangam) spontaneously offered to give each of their members a tin of tea! Having made this generous promise, it was surprisingly difficult to find tins in Gudalur or even the larger city of Calicut. Tins are, apparently, out of fashion, and most people seem to prefer cheaper plastic containers! Even the tin-makers we met suggested that we use plastic boxes instead. Fortunately, the airtight steel dabba is still popular in south India, and on March 17th 2011, we attended the Ambittampotty VCS monthly meeting with our 60 tea dabbas in tow!
About 50% of goods sold in Ambittampotty VCS are procured directly from producers. This includes rice, tea, coffee, dal and many spices like corriander, chillies, turmeric and tamarind. However, as the daily grind goes on, its easy to forget the faces behind each product. The tea dabbas from AMS are a simple reminder that an adivasi family has taken care of their tea plants, picked the fresh leaves, supplied them to the Adivasi Tea Leaf Marketing Society and earned a part of their family income. The women of Ambittampotty were very pleased with the tea and plan to drink lots more, in support of the AMS!
 Parukutty, a leader of the VCS, invited us to her housewarming in April. We had a Just Change Kerala workshop to plan for the future on the same day. So between sessions on our learnings over the last 4 years and our plans for the next few years, we took an extended lunch break at Parukutty's brand new house! It was like walking into an Ambittampotty VCS meeting – all the members were playing host, busy looking after guests, serving lunch, showing visitors around the new house. And the food itself - it was truly a Just Change Lunch! Rice, ghee, vegetables, spices, masalas, everything for the biriyani had been bought from the Just Change shop. “It's high time we started selling chickens” joked Geetha, a member of the Velillamad VCS.
 Camaraderie is usually tangible in most Indian villages, especially at a celebration or festival. But Ambittampotty was definitely painted a little redder (orange-er!?) thanks to the members of Just Change and the close relationships that have built up between VCS members and their families. While Just Change is, at some level, a macrolevel concept or theory, it also demands that each individual member make a choice and a commitment to a fairer way of trading and living. Being a part of the celebrations in Ambittampotty was like seeing Just Change live and in action! Raise your cup of tea - here's to Parukutty and the women of Ambittampotty VCS! A Fabulous Fairtrade Fortnight
Just Change UK volunteer groups had a great opportunity for selling Just Change tea and spreading the Just Change message during the annual Fairtrade Fortnight from 28th February to 13th March this year. 
The Fairtrade Fortnight idea was pioneered in 1997 by the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation to celebrate fair and ethical trading values, raise awareness about fair trade and promote fairly traded products. This is done through fetes, fairs, food and drink tastings, fashion shows etc all over the country. Local authorities and governments, schools and colleges, faith groups, community groups, businesses, fair trade groups and many more get involved.
The Fairtrade Foundation released a report during this year’s Fortnight revealing “explosive growth” in the US and UK market for fairly traded goods. In a summary of the report, The Independent newspaper said: “Every day, Britons consume 9.3 million cups of Fairtrade tea; 6.4 million cups of Fairtrade coffee; 2.3 million Fairtrade chocolate bars, 530,000 cups of Fairtrade hot chocolate; and 3.1 million Fairtrade bananas.”  So Just Change volunteers all over the UK were trying to make a bigger percentage of those 9.3 million cups of tea, Just Change tea! For example, the Manchester group sold tea and shared the JC story at two fairtrade fairs, one at Stockport Town Hall, organised by the Stockport FairTrade group. As there were many ardent fairtrade supporters, it wasn’t hard to sell tea and they also shared the JC story with many people. They shared a stall with Oromo coffee and if anyone said they didn’t drink coffee, they immediately asked them if they were tea drinkers instead and offered them Just Change! The London group also sold Just Change tea at a community festival in the local ecology centre and provided Just Change tea for a World Women’s Day event – making some useful contacts in the process.
Anyone promoting Just Change will have benefited from the increased awareness of fair trade issues around the country as people were urged to “show off your label” and demonstrate their support of fair trade. And we are already starting to think about how we can make the most of Fairtrade Fortnight 2012!
Sabita Banerji & JCUK Volunteers A bit of a fishy Change! The newest members of Just Change are the fisherwomen of Nagapattinam. Supported by Sneha, an NGO, their six microfinance federations have taken on the Just Change idea like fish to water! Being business women themselves (their husbands, brothers and sons go out in boats into the sea, but the actual selling of fish is done by the women), they have already piloted sales in one federation, under the brand 'Golden Leaf' tea. In April, once children's examination fevers were done, 30 firebrand leaders and members from the fishing community visited Gudalur. They travelled more than 12 hours by bus, through forests, over mountains, through chilly night breezes at Ooty and reached us at 3am, a little cold, but not enough to stop the songs and dances! They were the first visitors to the AMS in April and inaugurated the Gudalur Area centre guest house!
Despite not much sleep, and water shortages in Gudalur, the whole group were up and breakfasting by 8am. The kids from the Adivasi school were playing outside, having a last week of games and crafts before breaking for the holidays. Not idle for even a moment, Tamilselvi and Jenitha Rani immediately got their group together and taught the children a new game while waiting for us to get the meeting hall and projector organised!
Manoharan, from Accord, gave them a good introduction to the AMS, its history of land rights campaigns, the setting up of Adivasi institutions like the Hospital and School, economic development activities like the tea leaf marketing society and Just Change, to forest rights campaigns. Having understood the larger picture, we left for a visit to the Madhuvana tea estate. Travelling down the bumpy roads, standing in the back of the pick-up truck and watching tea leaves being picked, the women discussed the risks involved in this kind of life and livelihood. “Every morning, when my family members leave for the sea, I wonder, will they return home safe today?” said Vijayarani. “But life for adivasis near the forest, in remote areas with elephants and wildlife nearby, is risky too. And picking over 30kgs of tea leaves a day is backbreaking work!” The group learned how to pick the top 2 leaves and a bud, and got a little practice at tea leaf picking, understanding and learning more about the Adivasi estate in the process. After lunch, there was time for a bit of fun near the stream, and a drive into the forest at Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.  Day 2 also began early, and we drove down to Nilambur in Kerala to meet the Just Change women at BVM (Bhoodhan Vikas Mandal). Their monthly committee meeting got a bit hijacked by the Nagapattinam women – but to great effect. The verve and vitality of the fisherwomen was infectious and got the quieter Kerala women talking as well! We split into two groups and visited both the Ambittampotty and Velillamad VCSs, meeting their members and discussing the finer aspects of the business. The ride back up the mountains to Gudalur was quieter, and the women had already begun reflecting and sharing their thoughts on their experiences over the last couple of days. Each group had insightful learnings to recount, mostly about the strength and unity of the women's groups, and the staying capacity of their business, having started from scratch with no experience whatsoever, the women at BVM are now managing an annual turnover of more than two and a half million rupees!
The last day was spent learning how to make soap, at the Adivasi Soap Unit, and then a visit to the tea factory to see what happens to green tea leaves and how they ultimately reach our cups! We squeezed in an interactive session with Bharathan and Ayyappan, AMS leaders who are closely involved in the running of the Adivasi Tea Leaf Marketing Society. The last session of this visit was an interaction with Stan, and planning out how to take Just Change forward in Nagapattinam! So far, 350kg of tea have been sold by the women in Karaikalmedu and Kilinjalmedu, and they have all kinds of exciting plans to sell tea, set up seaside tea stalls, and expand their business to all their villages. Their visit inspired us as well, with their energy and laughter. May their business take off and expand like the ever widening ocean that is an integral part of their lives on the coast! A Key Moment for Just Change! Just Change UK are looking forward to their annual National Meeting, due to take place in Oxford on Saturday 21st May. About 30 Just Change volunteers, directors and key partners will be coming from as far and wide across the UK as Manchester, London, Durham, Marsh Farm and Scotland to make the most of the rare and valuable opportunity to talk face to face. We'll reflect on the challenges, successes and lessons of the past year and put together an action plan for the year to come and beyond. This National Meeting comes at an important time in JCUK's development. We're now about one quarter of the way through the two-year grant from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, which has financed the part-time Project Manager post and associated costs. The proposal that secured this funding outlined a thorough and ambitious plan for Just Change UK, including targets to greatly increase our sales of tea, diversify into spices and potentially other products, increase and strengthen our volunteer network, and deliver concrete impact working with our partners at Marsh Farm, as well as developing new community partnerships. This National Meeting is an important opportunity to reflect on our progress towards these goals and put in place concrete plans for the next 18 months to ensure we achieve our aspirations.
To achieve our goals, working together across the network and harnessing the enthusiasm, skills and energy of our volunteers will be critical. Volunteers from different parts of the country have already been collaborating with great results. At the moment, for example, different local groups are working together remotely on developing marketing materials and a refreshed volunteer induction pack. Such collaboration has been supported by the launch of the monthly internal e-bulletin, which kicked off in February this year, and the network members log-in area that has been set up on the Just Change India website, where we can now all share documents and resources across network members in India and the UK. We look forward to continuing work on these projects and the new activities and innovations that will no doubt come out of the meeting!
That's it for now, folks! Just Change tea and handmade soaps are on the Amnesty International catalogue - so don't forget to place your orders, if you haven't already! |
