Gifts
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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India April 9, 2008 11:35PM
Change Brewing in the Tea Lands
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Darjeeling's picturesque villages cling precariously to temperate Himalayan foothills that soar to heights above 9,000 feet. Four hundred miles away, Assam's teeming towns jut chaotically from humid lowlands that are routinely — and sometimes catastrophically — flooded by the mighty Brahmaputra River.
Although vastly different in their topography, the two northeastern Indian regions are inextricably linked: their very names are synonymous with some of the best tea in the world. Strong, malty Assam and golden-hued, fragrant Darjeeling teas have been prized above others for more than 150 years.
In Assam and Darjeeling, tea dominates the local economies and societies. Its hegemony is concentrated in the dozens of tea estates that carve out their respective territories like miniature kingdoms.
That feudal comparison extends to the way most tea estates are laid out. The factories, main offices and managers' houses — often structures from the British Colonial period — are usually situated together among carefully manicured gardens.
The estates' legions of tea pluckers and other workers live in a much different world: small, densely populated villages hemmed in by tea fields. A tea estate is essentially a community unto itself, a company town where the land, the houses — everything — belong to the tea company. Nothing can be changed without the consent of management; in most cases, not even a family garden can be planted without consultation.
Across these fabled tea lands, Mercy Corps is partnering with socially conscious tea estate owners and managers to right several generations of wrongs. The agency's Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI), implemented through local partner agencies and funded entirely by Oregon's Tazo Tea Company, works to improve the living, health and economic conditions for families who reside in tea estates or adjacent agricultural communities.
The provisions of the Labor Plantation Act, passed in 1951, are supposed to ensure the following for tea estate families: housing, rations, firewood, proper sanitation, clean water supply, health care and primary education up to fourth grade. But these provisions are not widely enforced, and estates' social programs wax and wane with the profitability of the current tea crop. As a result, the estimated literacy rate for tea families across India is a dismal 30 percent, and there is a high prevalence of preventable diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Hundreds of thousands of workers who pluck and process the world's most famous teas are relegated to a life behind estate fences, eager for change but afraid to voice their opinions lest they lose their jobs and homes. The average daily pay is about $1.28 for a tea plucker in Darjeeling, one of the lowest wage rates in the formal economy, according to the Indian Labor Bureau. But it's the only way of life families in these places have known for generations.
In many of Assam's plantations, families were relocated from poorer parts of India, such as Bihar, in the mid-1800s to work the land. A century and a half later, they have preserved the traditions of their homelands and created new customs, so that their culture is wholly different from the Assamese way of life outside the estate's boundaries.
The CHAI project, started in 2002 as a partnership between Mercy Corps and Tazo Tea, currently helps almost 13,000 people empower themselves and find opportunities to build better lives for themselves, their families and communities.
The driving forces of our work are Community Initiative Groups, made up of village representatives selected by the community, which are responsible for making decisions on what activities will best benefit the village. These groups work with Mercy Corps to design specific projects, marshal resources and meet goals.
These groups also give tea workers the organization, authority and confidence to bring their concerns to tea estate management and government officials. In doing so, they are negotiating for more educational opportunities, improved infrastructure and better living conditions. They are also finding ways to make money — and sustain their communities' economic well-being — during periods of underemployment.
Such a transition doesn't come quickly — or easily — to Darjeeling or Assam, places steeped in a colonial past that still endures. But, thanks to an unlikely but powerful partnership between estate management, tea workers, Tazo Tea and Mercy Corps, change is brewing.
India April 9, 2008 11:35PM
Unity Takes Root in Darjeeling
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Life isn't easy for tea pickers in northeast India's Darjeeling District. Workers scale the unbelievably steep slopes of famed tea estates for eight hours a day, hauling massive baskets brimming with plucked tea leaves. But, at the end of each day, they have barely enough money to live on — and, with the seasonal nature of the work, a steady income is almost impossible.
This system has held sway in Darjeeling for at least 150 years. But today, with help from a partnership between Mercy Corps and Tazo Tea Company, former tea pickers are creating a system of their own — one which involves their own tea fields and wages that can support their families.
Their idea is called Organic Ekta. The word "ekta" means "unity" in the Nepali language — and that unity is transforming the way of life for small tea farmers in Darjeeling's lofty hills.
Small fields, big dreams
After a couple of hours driving from Darjeeling town on steep mountain roads with multiple switchbacks and some white-knuckle drop-offs, we arrived in the village of Ranibun — a hamlet situated thousands of feet above sea level with astounding views of the Himalayan foothills. We were greeted by a couple dozen tea farmers and a Mercy Corps project manager, 27-year-old Srijana Darnal. Ranibun is one of eight communities connected by the promise of self-sufficiency — and a better standard of living — that Organic Ekta offers.
The farmers are proud of their work and eager to demonstrate what they're doing. Most of them have labored in the surrounding tea estates for years, turning over what they've harvested for the same tiny wages day after day. Now they're picking their own tea from their own small fields.
When Organic Ekta began, Darjeeling's tea estates were resistant to the notion of buying tea from small farmers operating outside of their confines. For more than 150 years tea estates have had strict control of the industry: they have grown, plucked, processed, labeled and sold their own teas. They even lobbied the local tea association to pass a law to stop these small farmers from selling their crops.
Mercy Corps stepped in to advocate for farming families.
"Our deputy director, Sanjay Gurung, took their case to the heads of the tea industry in Darjeeling — not an easy thing to do," Darnal says. "Before you pass a law, it's important for those affected to be informed of what's going on. That didn't happen.
"The large tea estates think that small farmers don't exist. But together, they have the power to do a lot."
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
That power, channeled through Mercy Corps and its local partner, Darjeeling Earth Group, won the day and gave farmers the right to sell directly to tea estates. They now make 28 rupees per kilogram of harvested tea, up from the 10-18 rupees they once made selling their teas to middlemen.
And their sights are set higher still.
Good for nature and the community
True to its name, one of the biggest goals of Organic Ekta is to have all members' fields certified organic. This commitment isn't only good for the local environment — one of the most biodiverse areas in Asia — but also helps command higher prices for harvested tea.
All of Organic Ekta's 216 farmers are in the organic certification process. Most of them have never used any kind of chemical fertilizers or pesticides, but they still must get certified, which can be arduous.
"The farmers must first register with the land reform department, at which time they submit maps and soil samples," Darnal explains. "After this, they prepare a report or the tea board. In all, the process takes at least a year and costs 6,000 rupees (about US$154)."
Tazo Tea is funding the entire process — providing office space, conducting soil testing, surveying and setting up plant nurseries — for Organic Ekta's farmers. There are currently more than 120,000 high-quality organic tea seedlings in four local nurseries, waiting to be planted in newly certified fields.
When the farmers achieve organic certification and are able to sell at even higher prices, they will pool a large portion of profits and invest it back into their communities.
"This will foster self-sufficiency," Darnal says. "They will take responsibility for things like road repairs, school upkeep and other infrastructure. The farmers will transform their villages at the same time they're transforming their own lives."
Even after all of the certification is complete, Mercy Corps and Darjeeling Earth Group plan to stay involved in an advisory role, supporting linkages between Organic Ekta's farmers and the tea board.
Refusing to be pushed around
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
One of Ranibun's most active tea farmers is 45-year-old Sushila Chhettri, a firebrand with a jade-green bindi on her forehead and a wild red streak in her hair. She insists that her tea field will be the one we visit this afternoon. No one argues, so Sushila smiles and leads us down a steep, shoulder-wide dirt path.
Sushila has picked tea for the last 25 years in local estates and often felt marginalized by management. She can remember a few occasions when she and other tea workers were forced to a different part of the estate when foreigners visited; she thinks this was because management wanted to hide the grim realities of daily work on the estates. As a result, she's not used to being photographed.
But when my colleague Thatcher Cook takes out his camera to capture Sushila picking leaves in her own field, she is in her element.
"I want to take you two to the tea estate and show you off to my friends," Sushila exclaims. "And then I want to go up to my old managers and tell them, ‘These are my guys — you can't push me away any more'."
Organic Ekta is giving more than 200 small farmers like Sushila the confidence to challenge a long-entrenched system, and to claim part of the profits from the worldwide appeal of Darjeeling tea for themselves. They're not ruling anything out; they're even thinking about building and opening their own factory for export-quality Darjeeling tea that they can sell directly to tea connoisseurs around the world.
Organic Ekta's undeniable spirit and unity are shaking up the status quo — and promising a better life for those who've had to live far too long for just over a dollar a day.
India April 9, 2008 11:35PM
A Skilled Trade to Last a Lifetime
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
The word "manokamana" holds a special place in the hearts of the Nepali people who populate the Himalayan foothills around Darjeeling, India. It signifies one of the culture's most sacred places — a holy site in Nepal — and literally translates as "good wish of the mind."
For 24-year-old Sharmila Gurung and others in the village of Upper Lingten, the lyrical word has a third meaning as well: opportunity.
Since October 2007, Sharmila has worked with seven others — a total of four women and four men — at the Manokamana Handmade Paper Factory in Upper Lingten, manufacturing sheets of handcrafted paper that are used to package Darjeeling's famous teas. The factory was built with a $32,000 investment from Mercy Corps' Phoenix Fund, in collaboration with in-kind construction labor and materials from the community. This investment equipped the factory with all the necessary machinery, such as boilers, shredders and presses, while also providing training for the factory's employees.
Sharmila had been involved with Mercy Corps for two years prior to her employment at the factory, as a member of the village's youth committee for the Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI) program. She has helped guide the community's work with Mercy Corps through regular meetings and projects that strive to improve the fragile local economy. Community involvement is a hallmark of the CHAI program — funded by Oregon-based Tazo Tea Company — engaging and empowering young people like Sharmila to lead initiatives to raise the standard of living in their village.
She obtained her position at the factory through a youth committee vote: the members chose eight people from the village that they thought would work hardest and best benefit from employment. All of the eight chosen were unemployed; many are among the poorest in Upper Lingten.
For this group, including Sharmila, the factory is truly the chance of a lifetime.
Soon after learning she'd received the job, Sharmila was sent to a ten-day training at the only other paper factory in the vicinity, in the hilltop city of Kalimpong. There, she and her co-workers learned various techniques from a master papermaker with 15 years experience.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
"My favorite part of the papermaking in Kalimpong was learning how to press things like tea leaves, ferns and flowers into the wet paper to make it more decorative," she said. "There was really something magical about seeing the finished product for the first time."
Today, she's working with her co-workers as a team to produce an average of 4,400 pounds of handmade paper each month. That's no easy task when you consider all the steps involved: stripping the bark from a local tree called argeli, boiling the bark into a pulp, placing the pulp into a shredder, adding organic plant dyes and, finally, pressing the pulp into sheets of paper that are hung to dry.
From finding the local materials that will go into the paper to packing the dried sheets for shipping, it's a team effort.
"I learned about collaboration from working with Mercy Corps on the youth committee," she explained. "And now I have learned to work as one with my co-workers."
Working united has already paid off for Sharmila and her colleagues: they received an order from the Makaibari Tea Estate for 24,000 sheets of paper at 20 Indian rupees (about 50 U.S. cents) per sheet. When the order is completed six months from now, and after taking into account production costs, the co-workers will share revenues of 312,000 Indian rupees — about US$8,000. That's about seven times more than the 50 Indian rupees that the average tea plucker makes per day here.
That kind of money is transformational for a place like Upper Lingten — and for youth like Sharmila Gurung. She's not only found a skilled trade to last a lifetime but, thanks to hard work alongside committed colleagues, she now has peace of mind as well.
India April 9, 2008 11:35PM
Buzzing with Cosmic Energy
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
I sensed, right away, that Rajah Banerjee had something to tell us. It was in the measured way he carried himself, the arch of his eyebrows and the calculating glance he cast across the room. What's more, I immediately got the feeling that he would test me to see what I knew.
And I was right. Within a couple minutes of sitting down in his office at the Makaibari Tea Estate, the estate's owner — and one of Mercy Corps' most ardent supporters in India's Darjeeling District — made his move.
"Why do we mulch?" he asked succinctly, as cups of fresh, steaming Darjeeling tea were placed in front of each person in the room. I wasn't sure how to answer. Should I demonstrate my own knowledge or defer to his? I mistakenly chose the latter.
"Well, I'm not really sure," I offered, hesitantly.
"Your friend is either stupid or cunning," he said to Thatcher Cook, the photographer who accompanied me on the trip.
"Actually, he's a little of both," Thatcher grinned.
"Landscaping, weed control, topsoil building," I blurted out.
"Good. And don't forget erosion control," Banerjee reminded me. "After all, healthy soil means healthy mankind." Then he smiled, raised a cup of the estate's Silver Tips tea and toasted our delegation.
I'd played into his game.
History, harmony and compassionate leadership
"Here at Makaibari, we are looking for flavor in the balance sheet of life," Banerjee explained, trying subtly to ascertain our reaction to his award-winning tea. "Shall I tell you how we work to achieve it?"
I nodded. We all did, in fact. So he continued.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Makaibari, he told us, was the first tea factory in this part of the world. It was completed in 1859. In fact, some of the 150-year-old machinery is still used to process tea today. The 1574-acre estate is also the only tea plantation to have never been owned by a British citizen; it has been in Indian hands for more than four generations.
But even the estate's rich history pales in comparison to its dynamic present: In 1988, it became the first tea garden in Darjeeling to be certified organic. Then, two years later, it pioneered the use of biodynamic agriculture in the area. Finally, in 1997, it was recognized by the World Wildlife Fund for its commitment to integrating tea plantations with existing forestlands. In fact, two-thirds of Makaibari is covered with trees.
"There are two acres of virgin subtropical rainforest here for every one acre of cultivated tea," Banerjee told us. "Connectivity to the trees will save us."
While harmony between work and environment is central to life at Makaibari, it's respect and understanding between its people that makes it such a special place. As with almost any bond between owner and employee, the relationship between tea estate management and workers in Darjeeling can be strained. In recent years, labor disputes on some tea estates have led to factory shutdowns and even violence.
Banerjee has largely avoided such issues by keeping in constant dialogue with Makaibari's workers — from managers to tea pluckers. He holds regular meetings — "joint bodies," he calls them — to discuss matters from forest management to children's education to the current tea crop to healthier living conditions for families.
"Makaibari is a way of life, not just a tea garden," he explained.
And that compassionate, collaborative leadership has created a natural partnership between Banerjee and Mercy Corps.
Small business and stinging nettles
I know it might sound like I've been unduly influenced by too much good tea and swayed by platitudes, but I'm by no means the only believer in Banerjee's lofty visions.
"Thunderbolt Rajah — that guy's a character," said John Strickland, Mercy Corps' Northeast India Director, of Banerjee. "He's a legend around these hills. And there's no bigger champion for Mercy Corps."
Banerjee is not only an environmental pioneer in this area, but a social entrepreneur. He has given Mercy Corps' Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI) program staff unfettered access to the seven tea garden communities on the Makaibari estate, and provided financial and other resources for Mercy Corps' work here. He's been instrumental in building improved roads for villages, bringing reliable electricity to the tea worker villages and creating a library for the area's children.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
One of the most recent projects is a small packaging business located in one of the estate's villages. Here, women are able to supplement their family incomes by turning sheets of local artisan paper from the Manokamana Handmade Paper Factory — another Mercy Corps-supported initiative — into beautiful packaging for Makaibari's organic teas. Banerjee has supported the project in a number of ways, including placing an initial order for 72,000 packages.
Banerjee believes that small businesses, fostered by the relationship between tea estates and organizations such as Mercy Corps, can go a long way toward improving the prospects of tea estate residents mired in poverty.
"Sustainability is the road to freedom," he said. "It's a win-win situation."
Then, suddenly, it was back to the hot seat for me.
"Have you heard of biodynamics?" Banerjee asked, furtively searching my eyes.
"No," I answered, remembering my skewering over why we mulch.
"Then, once again, you've come to the right place!" he exclaimed.
And that's how I came to know how about Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher and scientist, and the founding of biodynamic agriculture. Banerjee adheres to Steiner's principles, using such diverse ingredients as yarrow flower, stinging nettle, rainwater tea and quartz in preparations to unify and balance Makaibari's soil. It sounded strange to me, but the proof is in the profit: the Silver Tips tea I was drinking recently sold for almost US$1,300 a kilogram at auction in Japan.
"With biodynamics, you have actually made an inert mass alive," Banerjee instructed. "The land now vibrates with energy."
I was definitely buzzing from the tea and conversation.
Soon, it was time to leave Makaibari and move onto our next destination in India: Assam. But, in those last few moments near Darjeeling's oldest tea factory, I came to appreciate the interconnectedness between Banerjee, his workers, Mercy Corps and the land on which we stood.
India April 9, 2008 11:35PM
A Different Kind of Teatime
Rosy Choudhury
Director of Programs, East and Northeast India
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Rosy Choudhury, Project Director for CHAI Assam. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Dibrugarh is called India's tea city. But for some people, teatime is about hardship and inequality rather than a pause for relaxation.
Opportunities are scarce here and throughout this landlocked northeastern Indian state of Assam. Even Assam's most critical agricultural industry — 800 tea estates employ approximately 500,000 people and produce 882 million pounds of tea each year — has been laid low by declining prices on the world market.
Many Assamese families live in villages that exist within the boundaries of large tea estates. But only two in five adults that reside there are gainfully employed on the plantations throughout the year. The rest are only seasonal laborers, working in the fields, in the brick kilns or on construction sites.
Daily wages for these workers is somewhere between $1.20 and $2.00 per day. It's tough to earn more: most tea-estate residents have spent their entire lives behind fences, and therefore lack the technical labor skills, academic qualifications and capital to invest in their own future. Caught in a vicious cycle of no skills, no jobs, no capital and a stagnate economy, most of the residents on the tea estates face a declining quality of life.
To break this cycle, Mercy Corps has teamed up with Portland-based Tazo Tea and an array of local interests — including the Assam Branch of the Indian Tea Association, and four Indian tea companies — to form the Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI). Tazo's participation makes this a unique project in Assam.
Since its inception in Assam in January 2007, CHAI has promoted livelihood opportunities for nearly 500 families through savings and small business development in farming, livestock rearing, services, trade and commerce. CHAI aims to diversify and integrate economic opportunities on tea estates in some of the highest tea-producing districts in Assam — including Dibrugarh. CHAI focuses on improving people's livelihoods through:
- Institutional Development Services: forming of economic development councils, self-help groups, and new market linkages
- Financial services: savings programs, credit accounts and bookkeeping services
- Livelihood promotion services: identification of income opportunities, skills training and ongoing staff support
So far, dozens of emerging entrepreneurs have been able to generate a steady and regular income, unlike the erratic income of seasonal labor. They've also been able to tap into local markets and see profit margins increase. CHAI has also supported more than 400 youth with scholarships and technical trainings — after which youth are eligible for apprenticeships and help with self-employment. Theyre now working each day as hairdressers, shopkeepers and mechanics.
Providing alternatives to unpredictable employment on tea estates helps Assamese people earn a living and increase their food security. In Assam, with the help of Mercy Corps' CHAI project, the tea leaves are finally changing.
Rosy Choudhury is Project Director for Mercy Corps' CHAI project in Assam.
India April 9, 2008 11:35PM
Pay Dirt
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Moni Das's village has no name. It's simply referred to as Line 10, Deohall Division, Deohall Tea Estate, Assam. It is a microcosm of life inside Assam's estate fences: anonymous, hidden among acre upon acre of tea bushes and existing solely to serve the needs of the estate.
But steady work plucking tealeaves is hard to secure these days: most of the residents of Line 10 are part-time "casual workers" who are only called into service six or seven months a year. During those months, they make only 55 Indian rupees a day, or about US$1.40 — barely enough to keep a household running and never enough to put away for the long months of unemployment.
Moni, 25, and her husband are casual workers with two young children to support. They live in a small house with Moni's mother-in-law, a retired tea plucker. Every day, Moni said, the family faced uncertainty: What if there are fewer jobs in the upcoming season? What would they do?
Then last March she realized that the answer was all around her. There was money hiding in her household garbage, in the weeds that grew around the tea bushes and even in the manure of the cowherd that roamed the fields near Line 10. It was up to Moni and her friends to go gather it.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
The worm turns
That same month, Rekashree — a program officer from Mercy Corps' Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI), funded by Oregon-based Tazo Tea — visited Deohall Tea Estate for a community meeting. She met with Moni and her colleagues, who had organized themselves and given their group a name: Sokhi, which means "friends." Together, they discussed the possibilities of turning organic household waste, weeds and animal droppings into compost. Moni's group committed to the idea right away.
Rekashree, an agricultural specialist, came back soon afterward to help with a market analysis that showed a demand for compost around the area. Next, she gave the group training on how to make vermicompost, a rich organic fertilizer that uses worms to turn the soil. Moni and her friends gathered all the money they could — 1,200 Indian rupees, about US$31 — and took out a loan of 5,000 Indian rupees (US$128) from the CHAI project to begin their composting business.
They bought planks of bamboo and plastic sheeting to build the composting boxes, and donated pots and sifters from their own houses. The last thing they purchased — and the most critical — were the worms themselves: 500 flat, pink earthworms from a local agricultural college, costing two-and-a-half Indian rupees (six U.S. cents) each.
Next came the dirty work: gathering food scraps, weeds, grasses and, yes, cow manure to place in the composting boxes. The worms were then released and set about their task of transforming the mixture into valuable fertilizer.
"When the compost is done, it's totally dry," Moni explained, sifting the black soil through her fingers. "It won't stick to your hand, and it doesn't smell."
Moni's self-help group learned quickly — with critical assistance, of course, from the worms. By June, they sold their first lot of compost — 200 pounds — at a discounted price to another women's self-help group that's growing vegetables in the area. Moni's group took the 250 Indian rupees they made and opened a bank account.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
It was the start of bigger things to come.
A big sale
Empowered by the experience of forming a group, starting a business and making their first sale, Moni and her friends decided to set their sights much higher.
"We wanted to further explore the local market, to find more clients and opportunities," Moni said. "We knew, from our work experience, that the tea gardens always needed more. So we went to management and asked them."
The response was overwhelmingly positive: Deohall's management asked for three tons of compost at five Indian rupees a kilogram. That translates into 15,000 Indian rupees, or about US$385 — a windfall for Moni's group and more than enough to pay back the loan from the CHAI project.
The group is currently busy building more compost boxes, gathering more materials and buying even more worms. They hope to deliver the full consignment of compost within the next several months.
These days, Moni and her friends are receiving a lot more visits from tea estate management and other self-help groups eager to learn from their success. As a result, Line 10 in Deohall Tea Estate is no longer anonymous. It's now known as the place where good, rich earth comes from.
India April 9, 2008 11:35PM
Styling a Better Future
Roger Burks
Senior Writer
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Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
The eight kilometers that Sonia and Rima bike each day from their homes on the Maud Tea Estate might seem like a short ride, especially to seasoned cyclists. But that distance spans two worlds in India's Assam state: one within the placid, strictly-regulated confines of the tea estate and another amidst the hectic pace of a business-driven city.
Both 17-year-old Sonia and 20-year-old Rima have spent all of their young lives on the tea estate, just like thousands of Assam residents their age. In Assam, tea is king: the industry employs at least 500,000 workers on more than 800 estates, producing 882 million pounds of tea each year. But the industry's dominance doesn't mean prosperity for families on tea estates: only two in five adults have a full-time job. The rest depend on uncertain seasonal labor that pays between $1.20 and $2.00 per day.
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
For youth like Sonia and Rima, the towns that flourish on the periphery of tea estates offer more opportunities for gainful employment. But, because of substandard schooling and a lack of training, people from tea estates often can't compete with more qualified applicants for even the simplest jobs.
Mercy Corps, through a partnership with Tazo Tea Company, is giving them a better chance to win those jobs. The Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI) has helped 400 youth over the past year with scholarships, technical trainings and apprenticeships — including Sonia and Rima.
Mercy Corps helped find the two young women find apprenticeships at the Nistha Beauty Parlor in the city of Chabua, a bustling place not far from the Maud Tea Estate. For several hours each day, they work in the tiny pink-walled shop, learning from an experienced stylist named Ellen Chetia and practicing their craft on customers.
Prejudices against tea estate residents run deep in this part of India. Even their styling instructor doubted their prospects.
"Initially, when they started their apprenticeships here, I wasn't sure they'd do well — coming from the tea gardens, especially," Chetia said. "But they've learned quickly and picked up what they've needed to. They're great at interacting with our customers."
Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Rima agrees that she and Sonia have learned a lot from the CHAI-sponsored program. "We feel like the apprenticeship has really helped us to gain skills like better communications and customer service, and put us on our way to becoming successful entrepreneurs."
Nearing the end of their six-month apprenticeship, Sonia and Rima plan to open their own shop soon — together, on the Maud Tea Estate. Mercy Corps will help them find a loan to get started.
"We want to name our salon after something about the CHAI program, which has helped us so much," Sonia smiled. "And when we open, we want our shop to be a place where women can feel comfortable, and where they always get great service."
So, in the next few months, good, affordable hair styling and other services will come to the Maud Tea Estate. But, more importantly, Sonia and Rima will carry a wealth of training and self-confidence back inside the tea estate fences — and maybe even the opportunity to a create few new jobs for young women with similar dreams.
India April 24, 2008 11:35PM
The Spirit of Social Responsibility
Dan Sadowsky
Website, Content and Services Team Manager
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Keith Hutjens' job as director of tea procurement has taken him to Assam, India, where he visited the CHAI Project. Photo: Courtesy Keith Hutjens
Portland-based Tazo Tea sources their tea, spices and botanicals from two dozen countries on six continents. Lemon myrtle from Australia. Chamomile from Egypt. Rooibos from South Africa. Rose hips from Chile. Cloves, cinnamon and black pepper from Indonesia. Premium teas from China, Kenya, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. Spearmint from right here in Oregon.
Keith Hutjens leads this worldwide buying effort as Tazo's director of tea procurement. His job comes with some enviable perks: He works in an office redolent with deliciously rich scents, gets invited to slurp and spit potential new products in the company's lab, and travels the globe meeting suppliers and sampling product. "We don't buy anything," he says, "unless we've tasted it first."
His trips to northeastern India and rural Guatemala include stops at the Mercy Corps projects that Tazo finances — side jaunts that he calls "probably the most fun and rewarding part of my job."
We recently talked to Keith about the roots and philosophy of Tazo's Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI), its commitment to social responsibility, and how he sees both the company's charitable practices and its partnership with Mercy Corps evolving.
How did Tazo get into philanthropy, and specifically into a partnership with Mercy Corps?
For over 25 years our founder, Steve Smith, had been traveling to "origin" — which is the word we use to mean where we source our products from. Six years ago we decided it was time to act and establish a program to give back to the areas that have given us so much. We talked to a handful of NGOs and at the end of the day, Mercy Corps located in our own backyard of Portland, impressed us with what they had to offer. The CHAI Project is a unique program in that Tazo actively manages the direction of the project with Mercy Corps and tailors the programs to the needs in each area.
Why did you choose to give back in Darjeeling, followed shortly by Guatemala?
India and Guatemala are where we buy some of the largest amounts of tea, spices and botanicals; —Darjeeling is known as the Champagne of tea and is important to our product mix, and Guatemala grows lemongrass and cardamom, essential components in many of our products. So it was important for us to go back and focus on these areas.
How do you source your tea in a responsible manner?
Three things go into that. First, we are committed to ensuring a responsible supply chain through our membership in the Ethical Tea Partnership. And I can talk more about that later.
Second, from an environmental perspective, the Ethical Tea Partnership has just set environmental standards and tea estates will start being monitored against these. And here at home, we've made a commitment to purchase renewable energy certificates from renewable resources, like wind.
And then third is that social aspect of going back to origin and improving conditions there and creating more opportunities for families. That's what we accomplish through the CHAI Project.
How does the CHAI Project do that?
We do it in different ways in different places. In Darjeeling, we're focused on supporting social development projects which include improving water quality and accessibility, providing vocational and leadership training for youth; training community health workers to provide preventive, basic curative and referral health care to rural villagers.
"Community Action Groups" are formed in each community, and they're the ones who select the projects. It took a while to change the prevailing mindset — which was much more top-down — but we've empowered these groups to think about what their needs are and we've seen them take on projects that have made a difference in their lives.
In Guatemala, we're in 11 cardamom-producing villages outside Cobán, helping families diversify and increase their income through beekeeping or citrus trees or plantains or pineapple, and also establishing health committees in those villages so they're eligible for government funding.
Like what kinds of projects?
Well, in one Darjeeling village I visited, we helped replace a bamboo bridge with a stone one in a community that had been a part of a tea estate that had gone out of business. Spring flooding knocked out this bridge each year and added 2 ½ miles each way for going to work each day or carrying in basic food needs each week. We've done several water projects with similar time-saving results.
And our program is very responsive. For example, we trained hundreds of young adults in job skills, but when it was hard for them to find jobs or start a business, we organized a two-day business training and put some money into micro loans. Soon we had 93 people take out loans of $75 to $100 with which they launched small enterprises such as animal husbandry or tailoring.
The other thing worth mentioning is that we've been able to leverage our own investments through our relationships with local suppliers. They voluntarily make contributions of 2-5 percent of the dollar value of the tea we buy from them. And since our business is growing annually by double digits, that's a significant amount of leverage.
And you recently expanded CHAI into Assam.
That's right. We'd wanted to do programs in Assam from the very beginning, but because of the political turmoil in that part of India it didn't feel right until recently. There we're focusing on economic development, because Assam has one of the highest unemployment rates in India.
So what is the Ethical Tea Partnership, and why did Tazo become a member?
The question for us was: How do you responsibly buy tea? The industry produces nine billion pounds of processed tea each year. Tazo accounts for less than five million pounds of that. Our buying practices don't have a huge impact on the industry, so we looked for an organization where we could leverage our purchasing power and have a broader impact.
Two years ago we joined the Ethical Tea Partnership. It's an alliance of 23 tea packing companies — including big ones like Tetley and Twining — that work together to ensure ethical sourcing and social responsibility in the trade. It's based in London, and it hires independent auditors to ensure standards are met in six key areas of tea estate life: employment (including minimum age and wage levels), education, maternity, health and safety, housing and some areas of basic rights — plus now the new environmental standards I mentioned earlier.
When tea estates don't meet ETP standards, or when they don't allow an audit, they come off the approved list. So we think they do a good job of making sure the tea we buy is responsibly produced.
A lot of coffee companies pursue socially responsible goals by increasing the amount of money that goes back into the pocket of the coffee farmer. Is there a similar model in the tea industry?
We haven't figured out a good model to get more money directly to the tea grower. Our parent company, Starbucks, has a system of transparency in place to make sure that money is getting to the farmer. But in Darjeeling and in Assam, for example, we're buying sometimes directly from estates, sometimes from tea brokers, and sometimes in auction.
There seems to be a trend of movement away from the British tea estate model, with more smallholders producing tea in areas around the globe. Smallholders normally produce tea on a few acres of land; they're growers who have up to 50 acres of tea under cultivation.
We're seeing that shift in Darjeeling. As part of the CHAI project in Darjeeling, for instance, we're supporting more than 200 smallholders through our partnership with Darjeeling Earth Group and their relationship with Organic Ekta.
How do you see your partnership with Mercy Corps evolving?
From the very beginning our goal has been to be a true partner in helping these communities, and the fact that we're going to these places every year to source tea and spices and botanicals makes it easy to be a part of that. It's allowed us to help Mercy Corps tailor programs and is the reason we're doing things differently in each area.
We hope to expand the CHAI project into a new region, perhaps Sri Lanka or Indonesia in the coming year as our tea business grows. We're looking at these and other places where we source products from and where Mercy Corps already has established programs, so that we can leverage our contributions and make the biggest impact.
