Sweet news from Kasinthula

Did you know that all the Fairtrade sugar in Divine comes from Kasinthula Cane Growers Association in Malawi.  Masauko Khembo has travelled over from Kasinthula to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight here in UK. Here at Divine we’re looking forward to meeting him and hearing more about Kasinthula – but in the meantime we asked him a few questions….

Kasinthula women preparing seedcane

KasinthulaCane GrowersAssociation (KCG) is a smallholder sugar cane projectlocated in the in hospitable Shire River Valley District of Chikhwawa in the south of Malawi.Long droughts occasionally result in famine and the twice-yearly rains frequently bring floods.Most families eke out a living growingmaize, cassava or rice on the arid land, whileothers earn cash from sugar cane or cotton or work on nearby sugar plantations. Poverty is rife with most people living in very basic mud huts and few able to afford to keep livestock.

Masauko visiting Divine Chocolate

What do you think of Divine Chocolate, which is made with Fairtrade sugar from Kasinthula?
Having tasted it I find it much better in terms of taste than those we buy at home which are made in South Africa. Divine Chocolate and other organisations that use Kasinthula Fairtrade sugar are like bringing divine intervention on reduction of poverty on Kasinthula farmers and surrounding communities. Lives of Kasinthula farmers and surrounding communities have really been transformed through FT.

What is the most important impact that being Fairtrade certified has made on the lives of sugar farmers in Malawi?

So much impact. Not only on sugarcane farmers but even the communities around the sugarcane farms. One example I would give is the primary school that has been constructed using Fairtrade premium funds. Before the school construction children had to walk more than 5km to the nearest school. For them to be able to walk such distance they had to be 7 or 8 years old. With the school they are able to start school at 5. Because of starting school late most girls could not complete primary school before getting married. With the school they will be in eighth grade which is the last in primary school at the age of 13. They should be able to go to secondary school before they think of getting married.

Kasinthula farmers are now living in better houses (brick walled and iron sheet roofed). Most of them have houses that are electrified. They now have access to portable water separating them from livestock in terms of sharing source of drinking water.

What are your hopes for the future – for you personally – and for Kasinthula? What is your message for people here in the UK (and the USA where Divine Chocolate is too)?
Personally my hope is to work for a bigger Kasinthula with more farmers than currently are. A bigger Kasinthula means more people getting out of a poverty trap. For the people in UK and US my message is buy more of Divine chocolate. There may be more brands of chocolate in the market but by buying Divine chocolate you are supporting famers and surrounding communities at Kasinthula. You are sponsoring construction of schools, improving maternal and child health of the people of Kasinthula, you are preventing sharing of drinking water between animals and people as people are now drinking from boreholes drilled using premium funds while animals continue drinking from rivers.

Fairtrade and international women’s day celebrated at Labour event

Sophi’s latest post:

Jennipher Wettaka

On Saturday I met Jennipher Wettaka at the Labour movement’s International Women’s Day Celebration in Westminster.  She is vice Chair of Gumutindo the co-operative of coffee growers in Eastern Uganda that supply Equal Exchange . 

Coffee from Jennipher's co-operative

Her smile was like a ray of sunshine as she described how women do most of the work and the men do not appreciate them, but that since their co-op has been successful the men have been much more interested! This filled the room with peels of laughter, an experience shared.  She was delighted to be here as an ambassador for her co-op and was looking forward to returning to Uganda to tell the women in the other villages of her experience.   She ended by plugging her coffee, thanking her friends at Equal Exchange.  Long Live Equal Exchange, Long Live Fairtrade, Long Live International Women’s Day.

Kuapa farmers meet Nobel Peace Prize winner

Fatima and Harriet, continuing their tour as ambassadors for Kuapa Kokoo and Divine Chocolate, joined up with PeaceJam in Bradford, and met Betty Williams a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and Chino, a fairtrade blueberries producer from Chile.

Harriet and Fatima - with Betty Williams (left) and fellow Fairtrade farmer Chino

Celebrating Divine Women for Fairtrade Fortnight

This year we’re Celebrating Divine Women for Fairtrade Fortnight - the amazing women who have supported Divine (and those who just loving eating it!) here in the UK and Ireland, as well as the women of Kuapa Kokoo who’ve been empowered by their organisation and grasped new opportunities with both hands.

Tal at Divine HQ has done an incredible job of putting the Divine/Kuapa roadshow together -  this year we’ll be taking in Liverpool, Warrington, Bradford and then heading south to Oxford, Cardiff and London.  Not only that – but we’re combining both a celebration of Fairtrade and the centenary of International Women’s Day – hopefully throwing in some partying for Ghana Independence Day too. (Find out more about the tour here)

Everything kicked off early this morning with the arrival of Fatima Ali and Harriet Boatemaa at Heathrow - two young cocoa farmers on their first trip out of Ghana – and full of amazement and curiosity about everything they see.  First plane, first escalator, first brick houses, first very fat black cat..lots of firsts.

I thought this was an apt spot to take a picture of Fatima and Harriet

Tomorrow they’ll be coming in to meet everyone at Divine – and then off to their first Fairtrade Fortnight event in Greenwich.  I left them watching The Railway Children in their hotel – and excited about all the new experiences to come. 

Harriet and Fatima at Tower Bridge

We’ll be aiming to blog, tweet and post on Facebook as much as we can while we’re on our travels. Really hope you’ll all join in.

Emilie’s first Divine report from Assin Akonfudi, Ghana

First post from Swedish graduate Emilie Persson:

Welcome to my posts from Assin Akonfudi!

welcome to Assin Akonfudi

Children by one of the many churches

I will try to capture some of the everyday activities from one of the many villages where the Kuapa Kokoo farmers live and where farmer grow the cocoa for the company they co-own – Divine. As a masters-graduate in global studies, from the University of Gothenburg in western Sweden, I’ve been given an exciting opportunity to spend two months in the Ghanaian countryside, more exactly Assin Akonfudi in the central region. Having a passionate interest for development and agriculture and with several years of experience advocating Fairtrade in Sweden, it’s great to be able to get a more in-depth insight into the lives of the farmers behind Divine.  I hope it will be as interesting for you too!

Assin Akonfudi is situated in the north of the central region, close to the district capital Assin Bereku, on the main road from Cape Coast to Kumasi. The village is a mixed community with people of the ewe, fanti and ga tribes as well as others from the northern part of the country. According to the last census Akonfudi has around 2600 residents, some being very spiritual and enjoying spending their time in any of the twenty-three (!) churches or two mosques that the village holds, and traditional beliefs are also common. Surrounding Akonfudi are farmlands and it’s very common to grow cocoa, but also oil palm, orange, coconuts, coffee and teak. It is also very popular to use part of the farmland for banana or vegetables like tomato, pepper and garden eggs. Grazing around freely are plenty of goats, sheep, chickens and dogs, the atmosphere is warm and welcoming and music can always be heard from every house.

The Kuapa Kokoo society in Akonfudi has been in place since 2007 and it has at the moment 23 members, out of which eight are women. In some of the coming blog posts we will join Kuapa’s recorder in Akonfudi  – John Dornu. He himself is a cocoa farmer and has been democratically elected by Kuapa members. John is in charge of collecting and paying for the cocoa from the members. We will join him at his farm to learn more about the complicated process of producing cocoa and all the steps involved.

In the picture below, I’m visiting the village Worakese Adabo, where Frank Arthur is the Kuapa Kokoo recorder.

Emilie and Kuapa Recorder Frank Arthur at Worakese Adabo village

Big Food Debate – September 2010, Abergavenny

Speakers from all over the world at the Big Food Debate

 What made last week’s Big Food Debate an especially important forum was that it gave voice to so many farmers and producers from around the world.  Yes, there were UK pundits and experts, but there was no doubt we were all there to listen to and understand the challenges and ambitions so lucidly explained by more than twenty five producers who had come from across Africa, Latin America and Asia. 

Organised by Twin (the NGO that has 25 years experience working specifically with smallholder farmers) and Fair Trade Wales, the Big Food Debate was a logistical miracle, as getting visas and travel arrangements sorted for this many farmers will not have been easy.  The sense of unity, sharing of problems, and extraordinary persistence and resilience amongst the farmers was palpable throughout.

The Debate opened with plenary presentations from Tomy Mathew representing the Fairtrade Alliance of Kerala, Southern India, from Peter Lipman of Transition Towns Network, and from Gareth Edwards-Jones of Bangor University. They set the scene for and against consumerism and Fairtrade in the search for sustainable solutions to trade injustice and food security.

The Debate then broke into six workshops all focused on different issues farmers face worldwide and the challenges faced here in the UK in engaging civic society to support farmer-centric solutions to the food security issues we are all now becoming aware of.

In the workshop on “how farmers can move higher up the value chain” we first heard about Zaytoun. This brand of Fairtrade olive oil is a triumph of hope over adversity for Palestinian olive farmers with every possible obstacle in the way of them producing the excellent product the country has been known for over 3000 years. Dyborn Chibonga of NASFAM farmers association in Malawi described how the farmers he represents have succeeded in making more money from their groundnuts and thereby moving further up the value chain, by adding roasting and salting to their offer. Kuapa Kokoo. Like Zaytoun, was another example showing how owning your own brand in the Northern consumer markets brings so much more than extra income.

Another workshop discussed “how farmers can build the capacity to be sustainable, particularly in respect of climate change’.  Here it became clear how profound the impact of changing weather patterns has been around the world. Carmen Willems of Junta Nacional del Café coffee farmers union in Peru described recent harvests being severely decimated due to the multiple effect of very heavy rains and drought at the wrong times. Coffee cherries are either not being pollenated, being washed off the bushes by the rain, or becoming more exposed to pests and diseases.  Junta Nacional del Café has an ambitious and well-conceived adaptation programme in place but they estimate it will need $130m to complete.  So far they have raised $5m. Emmanuel Arthur of Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana explained how important it was to present adaptation solutions to farmers in terms they understand, and which relate to their experience on their farms.  It should be they, the farmers, in control of their own destinies so they need to understand the problems.  Adaptation programmes should not be imposed on farmers by manufacturers and their technical experts.  Farmers should have the training and funding to implement these programmes themselves.

The overriding themes that came out of this Debate were the need for biodiversity, the potential for further organisation, networking and collaboration of farmers, and the need for funding.  Farmers cannot be expected to fund major adaptation programmes out of FT premiums. What is very clear is that it is the farmers themselves who are best placed and most experienced in stewarding the land and keeping it productive, and they should therefore have equal control over funding and how it is used – the power should not be in the hands of the funding provider.

Note: For more about how smallholder farmers are key to the future of the world’s food security read George Monbiot’s piece ‘Small is bountiful’ here

25 years of Twin – the NGO that has done more than any other to make Fair Trade a reality

 

Blackford Banda and Brywell Sikelo weeding groundnuts in Malawi

No other organisation has done more or gone further in developing fair trade in action than Twin (the NGO behind Divine Chocolate, Cafedirect and Liberation/Harry’s Nuts) which celebrates its 25^th anniversary this year. 

Coffee pulping in Haiti

Twin is a true pioneer both in terms of constantly developing new and better ways of ensuring smallholder farmers can help themselves achieve sustainability and the potential for growth, and introducing the farmer-owned business model into the UK market which brings added value and benefits well beyond those delivered by Fairtrade certification.  Divine Chocolate is delicious proof that a business where the largest shareholder is a producer cooperative, can thrive in one of the world’s most competitive food markets.  Twin must take much of the credit for this achievement, and the fact that it has amassed the best and broadest expertise in enabling more equitable and sustainable trade routes for farmers , working in countries  all around the southern hemisphere – across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Enrique Arguello, coffee producer, Huatusco, Mexico

Twin is the unsung hero of the fair trade movement – for without the progress made on the ground by Twin, and the achievements of the companies they helped create in convincing supermarkets to stock their products, and proving consumers would go out of their way to buy them, the Fairtrade market would not be the size it is today.

Willington Wamayaye, General Manager Gumutindo/Twin Trustee meeting Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, September 2010.

As the organisation marks 25 years at their AGM in Abergavenny this week, alongside the major conference on Food Sustainability Twin has coordinated with Fair Trade Wales, it is addressing major challenges for the future.

At the AGM they have heard from member farmers from Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Ghana and Kerala. In each country farmers face specific challenges but climate change and the worldwide economic crisis are having an impact on all of them.

It is very hard to set up and maintain farmers’ associations, but Twin has excelled at advising and liaising with farmers on organisation development, as well as economic, social and environmental sustainability, and has a large, diverse and committed family of farmer partners as a result.  The stark realities of the current world situation regarding food sustainability and security has prompted further exciting innovation to help farmers adapt to the very daunting circumstances in which they find themselves.

Twin may be a relatively small organisation but it is far ahead of the game in knowledge, networks and experience of working with and listening to farmers. The sustainability initiatives recently established by multinationals may have the benefit of excellent funding but they not only lack Twin’s specialist skills, but also the mission to deliver both the new farming methods, empowerment and the resulting financial benefits, directly into the hands of the farmers.

(Note: Twin was established by a visionary team with backgrounds in the Co-operative movement, international development and commodity trading, with the aim of working with producers, particularly smallholders, to help them establish associations, improve the quality of their crops, get access to Fairtrade markets, and gain more influence in their trading relationships)

Tal’s first week at Divine

Guest blog from Tal Drori – who’s joined us from Heinz as Marketing Manager:

Tal outside Divine HQ

Being the new kid on the block is never an easy one but somehow a minute after I went through the door at Divine towers (not really – its more like a town house) I felt cosy and comfortable. 

Dwennimmen - humility and inner strength

It’s the small things that make you feel welcome, like having a 5 minutes explanation on how to adjust your chair to the optimal posture for your back, or how to choose one of the Ghanaian Adinkra symbols (the ones which are on all our packs) to go into your business card.  I chose Dwennimen which stands for humility and inner strength.

The little open space office down in Gainsford street, is where the Divine people are making a difference. I have sat in some open spaces before, but this one is way more bubbly, even though there is usually not more than 10 of us at the same time.  Perhaps it’s the constant stream of phone calls, people shouting to each other (in a very civilised way though) and perhaps it’s the noise you get when people are really passionate about what they do.

And in my first week which was packed with inductions, the passion was always there, passion about chocolate, about fairtrade about Ghana & Kuapa.  Divine is a passionate brand!

There is no time wasting here, I have to be switched on all the time. So in less than a week -apart from inductions, already starting to manage our next two big events   (Country  Living Christmas Show and BBC Good Food in Birmingham)  , visited our lovely stand in the speciality food trade  exhibition, went for breakfast presentation about experiential marketing, contacted all our devoted volunteers and fair trade partners, and started to arrange my thoughts on how we can do things even better! 

How do I even find time to blog ???

After years in marketing corporate brands, it is such a good feeling to work for a brand you take real pride off, the kind that makes a positive difference to people , and the kind that make people go- Wow I just love It! (+ an envious look J) 

There is always a downside of course which is all this beautiful chocolate lying around winking at me, being hard to resist, this and friends constantly nagging me for free samples..

Cocktails and stars at the Observer Ethical Awards

Observer Ethical Awards 2010

Sophi and I went along to the Observer Ethical Awards last night at the V&A - not up for an award this time but there to help celebrate world-improving innovation and excellence.  The Observer’s Lucy Siegle - Queen of Green – shared the podium (dressed in Sika) with a sharply suited Colin Firth and presided over a cheerful and laid back evening. Amongst the winners was our own Board member Gordon Roddick - who deservedly won this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.  Gordon summed up his life’s work as doing something about the things that “pissed him off” – that was the motivation behind Body Shop, helping set up Divine with his wife Anita – and his latest campaigning initiative 38 Degrees.  Other notable winners included two young lads - the Recyclists – who have been helping people in their local community in Fife recycle by delivering their waste to the local recycling centre – on trailers behind their bikes. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was voted Campaigner of the Year, Caroline Lucas, the first Green Party representitive in the House of Commons, got the Ethical Politician Award, and Guy Watson from Riverford organic delivery service got his THIRD Observer Award (NB loook out for great review of the Riverford restaurant in Observer this Sunday)! 

Gordon Roddick - Observer Lifetime Achievement Award

Over a few cocktails (one of which had little pink petals floating in it which needed to be constantly removed from in between one’s teeth) it was great catching up with Livia Firth and everyone from Eco-Age, Marc Francis (one half of the Black Gold filmmaking team), Harriet Lamb and the Fairtrade Foundation team, and Rosie Budhani from the Foundation ethical fashion people. Vic Morgan, one of the guys behind ethicalsuperstore.com was there too, and Martin Wright, editor of Green Futures.  Spotted Jo Wood, Ken Livingstone, and John Sauven director of Greenpeace in the audience.

We’re still extremely proud of having won Observer Ethical Business of the Year (this year won by B&Q for demystifying ecological ideas for the consumer), and it’s good to see both smallscale local initiatives and big company efforts being acknowledged at the same event. 

We went home with the mother of all goodie bags (including a Divine bar of course).

Why a bag made my day in Ladywell

posted by Sophi Tranchell:

Sophi's got a brand new bag

I made a very satisfying purchase this month and it is not often I can say that.  I was in our local iron mongers and I noticed a bag.  As I was buying a number of things, I bought it to carry everything home in.  It was a white cotton bag with an attractive design saying Shop Local in Ladywell.  It worked for me on so many levels, it felt like the culmination of my last ten years’ work.  It was in my local shop, it was there because my local elected authority Lewisham, as part of their commitment to being a Fairtrade Borough, had commissioned and purchased the bags.  The bag was made from organic cotton that was Fairtrade certified, but the story didn’t end there.  It was imported by Bishopston Trading Company, one of the pioneer fair trade companies based in Bristol, a worker co-operative established in 1985 to create employment in the southern Indian village of K.V.Kuppam. 

So when I bought that bag, not only did I avoid adding to the land fill of never-degrading plastic bags, I also supported my local shop,  Lewisham’s campaign to be a Fairtrade borough, Bishopston’s alternative model of doing business and the organised people in that village in Southern India.  It really was helping to make the world the way I’d like it to be.