For this issue of our newsletter, we have three stories - our visit to a partner producer group called Aharam in Tamilnadu, an update from Orissa and finally, Sabita Banerji, from JCUK  tells us what Just Change means to her. We also want to share Stan's brand new Blog with everyone! Here's what he says about it

"During the last decade, I have had the privilege of travelling to different parts of the world & sharing experiences of working on issues of injustice and the resultant poverty at the grassroots. Being able to share thoughts & ideas with a very diverse audience has helped us tremendously, and opened many doors for further thought, reflection and action. But with climate change, it seems best to travel less. How do we continue to benefit from this sharing of ideas, thoughts and experiences without jumping onto planes and flying halfway around the world? I decided to learn from my children and catch up on my now rusty IT skills and start blogging"

 Just Change Team India

Aha - It's Just Change at Aharam...

Set up by Farmers Cooperatives in Tamilnadu and the Covenant Centre for Development (CCD) in 2005, the Aharam Traditional Crops Producer Company is no stranger to us. For the last two and a half years, we have purchased a lorry load of rice from Aharam every month! And when their crop is ready, we buy coriander, chillies and tamarind as well. This year we tried two new items: thoor dal and broken coriander seeds (used to make coriander powder). However, since most of our interaction was via telephone and only a few JC members have been involved in setting up the systems for our trade, we decided to transplant our quarterly 'Partners Meeting' from Kerala and hold it at Aharam!

Twenty five people from JC Kerala and Gudalur set out on a three day visit to Aharam in Madurai. We travelled by overnight bus and train, were picked up by a van from CESCI (Centre for Exploring Socio-Cultural Interaction) and unloaded at their beautiful campus at Mayagram. After a quick freshening up and breakfast, we headed back into Madurai town to the CCD office. There we met Vikram and Ramaiah, who run most of the trading activities. Aharam's retail operations run through individual entrepreneurs, women from their four federations, who have a monthly system of purchasing and delivering goods to their villages. They collect repayments from their members on a weekly basis, and on full repayment to Aharam, they get a commission. These women are called 'jyothi' which means light. We met jyothis from the Madurai Federation, and later, Shanti, Rakamma and Meenakshi from the Sevaiyur Federation. Since two of the JC Kerala groups had used a similar retail model, albeit not too successfully, an interesting discussion ensued between the women. We learned that the jyothis have a cyclic distribution system once a month and after that focus their entire energies on collecting payments. Like us, they found this was the hardest, and most unpleasant, part of the job! They support each other when needed and in turn, their SHGs support them when push comes to shove, giving them loans on behalf of the defaulting member.

Jyothis are only a small part of Aharam's turnover, their main business being bulk purchase of goods directly from farmers at harvest time. We visited their medicinal plant collectors federation at Sevaiyur which has set up another company called Gram Mooligai. These groups of the Valayar community aggregate their medicinal plant collections and sell them to Gram Mooligai and other buyers. Mr. Muthu Velayadam, a founder of CCD, shared with us the history of their federations and their transition from micro-finance and credit to livelihood interventions based on local and hereditary skills. They are grouped into seven areas – cotton, coconut, groundnut, medicinal plants, banana, paddy and tamarind – and are trying to take control of the entire market chain, from producer end of raw produce, through production, aggregation and processing, right to the consumer end of the final finished product. Aharam's focus for this year is in aggregation of mango (to be processed into pulp and held in trust for the growers groups until sale) and medicinal plants. Another sister company, Adharam, has been set up focusing on energy and jyothis are selling smoke-less, energy efficient stoves called Oorjas.

Meeting Producers: We were able to interact with a few farmers groups – notably the cotton farmers from whom we purchased thoor dal. Yes, the cotton farmers! Dals are popularly inter-cropped with cotton and we were pleased to find that all of the farmers have stayed off intensive use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides due to water and climatic conditions. So as an added bonus of buying our dal directly from them, its organic to boot!

We also met a family of tamarind processors. India is the world's largest producer of tamarind and this part of Tamilnadu is full of giant tamarind trees. Tamarind is used in savoury dishes like sambar, as well as in sweets and even in Worcestershire sauce! This year, the tamarind crop has been less than last year. Tamarind trees are a common property resource, and the trees are hired out by different agents. All family  members - grandmothers, mothers, daughters and grandsons – get involved in the harvesting, drying, de-shelling and de-seeding process. We buy about 3-4 tons from Aharam, and our members in Kerala definitely appreciate the good quality and taste. We met a group of mango farmers, who aggregate their crop and store it collectively as pulp – mangoes may soon be our next JC product!

All in all, we had a good trip, with lots of thinking, sharing and learning. Here's to more interaction with Aharam and their members as we try to take control of the market chain!

The Spice Girls in Orissa!

Two women cycle past us into the Sahabagi Vikas Abhiyan (SVA) centre in western Orissa. Jhumoo and Basanti live in Kona Bira village, about 3kms away. Their women's cooperative has set up a spices unit to process and sell their produce. SVA has helped the unit purchase machines and develop a brand called Gram Swaraj (after Gandhi's 'self-reliant village'). Jhumoo and Basanti wash, clean, powder and pack the spices and have been learning to handle the packet/pouching machine. In the last three years, their team has expanded from just the two of them to six people. Their major products are turmeric, chillies, coriander and mustard, all grown locally in Orissa. These are ground to make a variety of masala powders. They also run a hulling machine and hand operated oil expeller. Villagers bring their paddy to be hulled into rice, their oil seeds to be pressed for oil. In March 2010, the unit expanded, built a new room and bought two new grinders. Apart from spices, the unit also wholesales Just Change tea from Gudalur. 

The Gram Swaraj Masala unit started as part of SVA's make trade fair campaign. The Paschim Orissa Krishi Jeevi Sangho (group of those in western Orissa whose lives depend on the Land and Agriculture) joined adivasis in Gudalur and women's groups in Kerala to form the Just Change India Producer Company. Under the brand “Sahayog-Just Change” (sahayog means cooperation), shops have been set up in five districts of Orissa, and they sell the products of the Gram Swaraj Masala Unit, as well as vegetables and seeds. Since 2008, Producer group members have installed numerous organic mills for rice, flour and oils. Recognising that their producer members are also consumers of other goods, SVA has stepped into retail and members of their Cooperative have set up over 40 village shops! We, at the Just Change Trust, hope to spend more time in Orissa over the next few months, and help them tap their large business potential.

  From JCUK, Sabita Banerji tells us her story -                         A TEA PLANTATION CHILDHOOD

I was born about 300 km south of Gudalur in a little town called Munnar, also a tea growing area in the Western Ghats. The first time I opened a packet of Just Change tea, the fragrance catapulted me back to dusty red roads cutting through green seas of tea bushes; to the factory where mountains of freshly picked tea leaves are poured into huge machines to be heated, withered and dried.

It brought back the sound of monsoon rain on our corrugated iron roof, the scary night-time drives when you might encounter a rogue elephant in the middle of the road. And the days boating on Devikulam Lake or picking wild mushrooms on the hillside. It was an idyllic childhood. For me.

When you are a child, you unquestioningly accept the world the way it is. We lived in a big company bungalow with a cook, a gardener, a cleaner, a groom and an ayah who looked after me and my sisters. We had a company car and a driver who drove us to school, the market, the Club. We lived completely separate - and very different - lives to the people who worked in our house, plucked the tea and laboured in the factory. But the children of the people who worked for us were our first friends.

It was only as I grew older that I became aware of how arbitrary it was that my sisters and I could live the way we did, while our friends lived in tiny houses with few possessions and little opportunity to improve their situation. They were better off than many Indians; they had secure employment, housing, health care and education, but back then in the '60's, their standard of living and prospects were incomparable with ours. Now many of them own shares in the tea company and their standard of living is considerably improved. But my early exposure to systems that arbitrarily made some people poor and others rich, drew me to working in international development.

But over the years, although I knew that international aid organisations were doing wonderful work all over the world helping people to escape from the worst effects of poverty and injustice - I began to feel that this wasn't tackling their causes. Inequality built so deeply into the history and structure of the global economy needs to be tackled from every angle, by ordinary people making choices about what to buy and how much to pay, as well as by campaigners fighting to make international trade rules fairer.

When Stan, with representatives of the Adivasi co-operative and of Marsh Farm came to Oxfam’s offices a few years ago to talk about Just Change, I felt as though I had seen the light! Everything fell into place. Here was an economic system that worked on the basis of mutual benefit rather than competition. That was not tackling poverty by offering people charity, but was working alongside them as equals.

I am thrilled to have become part of the Just Change family and am looking forward to starting a Just Change group in Oxford which I hope will sell lots of Just Change tea and will raise wide awareness about this revolutionary new system of trading that is fair to everyone involved. The fact that this work links me back to the beautiful Nilgiri Hills of my childhood is an added bonus!

                                                Sabita

That's it for now, folks! Just Change tea and handmade soaps are on this years Amnesty International catalogue - so don't forget to place your orders. Our new consignment is on its way to the UK.