Rainbow Turtle Rebooted Fair Trade Podcast Rainbow Turtle

In this episode I am delighted to be talking with Rachel Farey of the One World Shop in Edinburgh. It's a beautiful shop positioned at the western end of Princes Street in Edinburgh with the historic castle as a backdrop.
Rachel has had an interesting journey that started with working with L'Arche after she left school. L'arche is an international federation of Non-profit organisations working to create networks of community where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together. From there she studied theology at Kent University where a friendship took her to Edinburgh and she started volunteering for the fledgling One World Shop. After a few years volunteering and then working for the organisation, she retrained as a religious education teacher and taught for a few years, before finally returning to the shop as manager. 
Rachel was involved setting up the British Association of Fair Trade Shops, was chair of the Edinburgh fair trade group, helped set up the Scottish Fair Trade Forum and was part of the team that helped Scotland become recognised as a fair trade nation.
In addition, Rachel has travelled extensively in the Indian subcontinent meeting producers and understanding the difference that fair trade makes to their lives.
Whilst I was chatting with Rachel I was struck by her knowledge of fair trade, the people involved, and the place that Scotland has played in helping producers and farmers across the world. We are fortunate to have people like her on our side! 

In this episode we are playing a recording of a talk by Sally Sawaya of Meru Herbs in Kenya that she gave recently to the staff of True Origin and Rainbow Turtle in Paisley, Scotland. Sally is the managing director of Meru Herbs, the Kenyan fair trade company that produces tasty sauces, jams and herbal teas. Meru is a semi arid region of the country where, for many years, water was hard to obtain for farming and domestic use. Things changed just over 30 years ago with a collaboration between the Meru catholic diocese, the Italian government, and the local people which implemented a project to provide water to about 430 families. This change in conditions sparked off the creation of Meru Herbs that went on to improve the lives of many people and empowered women to both work in and run the company.
Sally's story is one of many of the inspiring ones that have come out of Meru Herbs, where a change in circumstance, combined with fair trade, has transformed their lives. Sally started as an intern with Meru Herbs when she was at university studying for a degree in marketing. She went onto work for the company in various areas before becoming the managing director.  Other women have been able to buy land and grow their own food. In rural areas it was often the boys who were sent to school, not the girls, because there wasn't the money to pay for both. The conventional wisdom was that the family got a better return by educating the boys. 

In this episode we meet Mary Popple the current chair of JTS, the company that imports fair trade goods into Scotland and distributes them throughout the UK.

Mary grew up in Northern Ireland during the 50s and 60s on the border between the republic and the north. Her father was a church minister who tried not to take sides and, as tensions increased, took his family to Scotland. Those early years in northern Ireland gave Mary a strong sense of the importance of equality and of treating people fairly.

Mary has had an interesting journey to fair trade that has gone via the diamond industry and business management. It was her expertise in managing a business that led her to being invited onto the board of JTS. When she was a member of the St. Andrew's Fair Trade group they contacted the Royal and Ancient to ask if they would consider using fair trade teas and coffees. A successful relationship was established and now it is written into their procedures to use fair trade products at the Open golf championship.

Mary has a bright and positive outlook on life and it was a real pleasure to listen to her thoughts on how a fair trade business should be run. 

In this episode we bring you part 2 of the John Riches interview. (If you've not heard it, do check out part 1 where John talks about his early life and influences.)

We join John where he talks about setting up the Balmore Trust and The Coach House, instruments that were used to generate funds for overseas projects. Very quickly they got involved in buying products from people in small communities in Asia when they realised it was better to do that than give them grants. From there it was a small jump to getting involved in fair trade where it's about supporting the farmers and producers which then benefit their families and creates stable communities.

He's had about 40 years working in fair trade that includes setting up JTS that got involved in the Scotland Malawi partnership and buying and importing rice from small farmers in a land locked country. For the farmer, selling 90Kg of rice would allow them to send a child to school for a year.  He has a lot of insights into fair trade and I'm sure you'll enjoy this episode as much as I did.

In this episode, John tells interesting stories of working in a refugee camp in Austria after the 2nd world war, of being a chaplain at Cambridge University at the height of the student protests in the late 60s; working in the Transkei in South Africa during the apartheid era and meeting anti-apartheid activist, Steve Biko. He covers his time at Glasgow University teaching about the new testament in the bible and following a student out to Burmah to meet local villagers trying to live under the oppressive regime there. We end this episode in Glasgow during the late 1970s where he is teaching divinity to students and wrestling with the concept of how to help those who are struggling in developing countries around the world.

This short taster introduces Series 2 of the podcast. In this new series we'll be bringing you interviews with John Riches founder of JTS, Mary Popple of the St. Andrews Fair Trade Group and current chair of JTS and the Alternative Coffee Co. an exciting project that links fair trade speciality coffee farmers from Uganda and Rwanda with micro coffee roasters in the UK.