Invaded by the USA !

24/11/2011 – 12:59 pm

Well. It was a welcome invasion….

The LYF were delighted recently, to have visitors from the USA.  Vanessa Lancaster, a Michigan-based Education Consultant who specialises in curriculum materials and teaching techniques that reach disadvantaged communities and individuals, heard about the LYF’s work in setting up the Not Just A Trading Company programme.

Vanessa was particularly excited to hear that the curriculum materials that the LYF is developing on ‘ethical enterprise’ for disadvantaged groups – we’re aiming to reach those who are exceptionally bright – ‘gifted’ even – but who did not fit easily within a mainstream educational learning environment.   She decided to give her time and advice ‘in kind’ to the LYF and as well as spending time with LYF staff, got to meet local fair trade entrepreneurs at ‘The Fair Trade Co-operative’ in Holmfirth and to spend time with teaching staff at Stockport Academy.

Vanessa was accompanied by her ten year old son Mac.  Mac has developed an enormous interest in all things fairly traded,  following his involvement with the LYF. He has returned to Roeper School in Michigan with some brilliant ideas such as ‘Reverse Trick or Treating’ and says on his blog “Since I’ve returned from the U.K. I’ve been handing out Reverse Trick-or-Treat kits to my school. I’ve handed out almost 500 kits while telling parents and kids about Fair Trade”.  You can find out more about Mac’s inspirational activities here – http://macrox.tumblr.com/

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Black Gold Foundation Website Launch

26/10/2011 – 10:24 pm

It’s finally here – the Black Gold Foundation is now up and running and our new website is open for business (www.blackgoldfoundation.org). The BGF is aiming to keep the conversation about trade justice in the coffee industry alive and to encourage dialogue and consensus around the future of coffee trading. Please visit the site, sign up for the newsletter and support our work.

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Black Gold Foundation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Our Not Just Youth Enterprise Groups Update

26/10/2011 – 10:16 pm

NJU product development workshops at Fairtraders’ Cooperative

The NJU teams have been working hard on developing their products. They had a fantastic day at the fair traders’ cooperative in Holmfirth when groups from Doncaster Leeds and Huddersfield met up for the day to take part in workshops around developing and marketing fairly traded and ethical products.
We were very excited to welcome a top branding expert who visited us from London and spent the afternoon working with the groups on their branding strategy. The lively interactive session got them thinking creatively about the essence of NJU and how their products can help to spread the word about the benefits of buying ethically
The Huddersfield NJU group bring fair trade to Huddersfield market

The Huddersfield NJU group held a ‘celebrate in the market’ event which offered shoppers the chance to try some delicious fairly traded Caribbean and Asian food made from their families’ own secret recipes! This event was organized entirely by the Huddersfield group, with the help of the Kirklees Markets team. The Leader of Kirklees Council came along to lend support and was soon roped in to helping out, bringing people into the demo zone and talking to them about fair trade buying habits. The NJU team cooked up goat curry, chicken biryani and dhal, and served all with what the group has chosen to market as their first product – Kilombero long grain rice which is sourced from a farming cooperative in Malawi. This gave the group the chance to try their product on the public and to talk to customers about the rice – the feedback was conclusive – the market shoppers loved fair trade rice!

Doncaster NJ Group Receive Enterprise Training

The Doncaster (women’s) group have been busy over the last few weeks – learning about the beauty trade and the wide variety of products on the market.  They all love to pamper themselves and wanted to know more about the ethics of the beauty trade.  They have looked at the many different products on the market; those that are ethical and not so ethical and even had a go at making some themselves.  During a workshop they made face masks and sugar face polish – all available on the High Street.  They quickly discovered how easy they are to make!  In addition, they learned about the ingredients that go into these products and how they can opt for ethically sourced ingredients such as honey, sugar, lemons and essential oils.

The group are receiving mentoring support from Groundwork South Yorkshire to develop their ethical business plan.   They are also going to introduce the group to a successful entrepreneur who developed his own beauty range at the age of 18.

 

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Not Just Us | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

LYF uses Local Radio to Reach Smallholders in Kenya

09/09/2011 – 2:50 pm

Reaching the Smallholders – Small charity, Big Loud Programme! Climate change, deforestation, food security, droughts, poverty alleviation, export markets, sustainable agriculture, gender, HIV… Is it impossible to reach smallholders in developing countries on all of these issues at the same time?

The LYF thinks not … At 8.30 pm last night, the first ever radio show aiming to deliver real market information to coffee farmers in Kenya, was broadcast to an audience of 4.5 million people and 500,000 coffee farmers via the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation channel Coro FM. Under the management of the Lorna Young Foundation (LYF) and its African partners, thanks to funding from Comic Relief, it is the first project of its kind to bring together a multi stakeholder platform to reach smallholders.

The LYF forged relationships with a cross section of ‘specialised’ NGOs, buyers, exporters, research and training institutes in order to deliver real time weekly information to coffee farmers in Kenya. The aim is to enable smallholders in coffee to make more informed business decisions when it comes to their crops and engagement and learning on key issues, such as quality and yields, climate change and food security.

Over the next 36 weeks, Joseph Macharia (an agricultural extension specialist, coffee farmer and radio presenter) will run 15 minute programmes under the name of ‘Farmers Gold’ or Dhahabu ya murimi as it is known in the local Kikuyu language. He will be tackling important issues around Agriculture (weather breakdown and tasks month by month) Coffee markets (crops, quality, prices, local and regional markets) Climate Change (food security, sustainable agriculture diversification), Certification (social and environmental requirements, buyers, markets) and will incorporate Gender and HIV issues into the educational broadcasts via specialists at the Swedish Cooperative Centre in Nairobi.

An opportunity will be given to smallholders themselves to have their own questions answered and to engage further with the partners, through a live feedback facility which uses SMS text messaging and an internet platform. Every week, 5 key questions submitted via the platform will be addressed through the ‘Question Time’ part of the programme. What’s truly innovative about Dhababu ya murimi though, is not just the wide area of complementary issues that the broadcast addresses – but that radio content will be decided entirely through two farmer field listening groups based at Gikanda and Rumukia Coffee cooperatives in Nyeri – an area that the LYF has been working to build up a long-term programme of support with since 2007. This means that content is collected from the farmers themselves, documented and broadcast for the benefit of all smallholders.

This use of radio extension offers farmers extension focussed support with up to date information and the opportunity for feedback and follow up. The LYF aim to scale up this approach in order to meet specific needs of smallholder clusters in other regions and with other crops.

Ian Agnew, Director of the Lorna Young Foundation commented “The beauty of being a small charity in the UK, with very few overheads is that we can afford to be flexible and adapt according to what the smallholders tell us their needs are.

For several years now, we – and our African partners – have been frustrated by the fact that even very few fair trade buyers, charities or campaigners have realised that the fairest way to transfer business and market skills to the smallholders is by equipping them to be able to deliver learning materials themselves. African institutions clearly have the ability and the desire to deliver such training in their localities, and it seems peculiar to us that Northern NGOs have not concentrated more effort and money in this area in order to build longer term capacity for smallholders.

Radio is a superb way of reaching out across Africa and we are grateful to Comic Relief for seeing the immense value that this programme is going to have in terms of future long-term food security.” Lorna Young Foundation partners on this project are Farmer Voice Radio, Coro FM, Swedish Cooperative Centre, Nyeri Technical Training Institute (NTTI), Coffee Research Institute, Coffee Marketing Services and Dormans. Bioclimate (UK) For more information on the LYF and the Smallholder Support Network please visit: www.lyf.org.uk

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Farmer Extension Programme, Latest News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

News From the LYF Board

08/08/2011 – 11:15 pm

Goodbyes! 

A sad farewell to our marvellous John Lewis Partnerships secondee – Hannah Mitchell who worked ‘virtually’ with the LYF and supported us with all of our publications and online media. She will be missed and we wish her all the best in her future career at
JLP. Also a fond farewell to Kate Sebag who has worked closely with the LYF as a much valued member of our Board. We wish Kate much success with her marvellous work at Tropical Wholefoods.

And Hello!

To David Keltie who is our latest Board Member. David has a formidable background in ethical trading and joins our existing Board Members – Martin Meteyard, Albert Tucker and Duncan White. Welcome David!

And A big HELLO to Cath Higgins – who is now managing all things in relation to administration and book-keeping.

Striking Black Gold?

The LYF has been asked to set up and manage a new venture– THE BLACK GOLD FOUNDATION (BGF) in response to the award winning film-documentary which highlights the struggle against trade injustice through the eyes of coffee smallholders in Ethiopia. Marc and Nick Francis – the filmmakers, are now working closely with the LYF to set up the BGF’s new website – which will be launched in September 2011.  More details to follow….

Lorna of Lockerbie Academy

Lorna Young herself came from the little town of Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire.  As a small charity, we sometimes struggle to try and get people, organisations and schools who are in favour of ‘Fair Trade’ to understand what it is that the LYF does and why we encourage innovations that encourage trade justice,  beyond buying certified products.  Not so with Lockerbie Academy who are
extremely proud of their former pupil, Lorna! The Academy were in touch with us recently, to inform us that they had raised some money for the LYF – a gesture which we were deeply touched by – when we know that there are so many more charities that they could have chosen to make the donation to.

Two of the pupils from the Academy also chose to visit Lorna’s parents – Daisy and Bob – who still live in Lockerbie, in order to
interview them about their incredible daughter for their Global Citizenship coursework.

Finally, we were delighted to learn that the Academy now has a ‘Lorna Young Trophy’ which is awarded each year to the student who excels the most in Global Citizenship. So big CONGRATULATIONS are in order this year – to Nicole Lawrie, who was awarded the honour.

We do hope that more schools in the UK will follow Lockerbie’s lead and find out about the unusual approach of the LYF. Once again – thank you Lockerbie Academy!

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Latest News, Lorna Young Foundation Enterprise, Project News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Oromo Coffee Company Goes Royal?

08/08/2011 – 11:09 pm

This summer has been the Summer of Love – for not one but TWO – Dukes of Cambridge!

The entrepreneur, Geetie Singh, proprietor of London’s famous organic gastro-pub ‘The Duke of Cambridge’ recently fell head
over heels for Oromo Coffee Co. coffee (OCC). After being approached by an LYF ‘fan’ and hardcore coffee addict – Geetie decided to try it for herself. She undertook a blind cupping test and found that the OCC coffee not only scored much higher on taste, but still beat her existing coffee supplier on price.

Members of the OCC at the Duke of Cambridge Gastro Pub in London

In order to celebrate the Oromo community’s joy at the Duke of Islington pub serving the OCC brew Geetie held an afternoon of coffee tasting, led by one of the world’s leading experts on coffee cupping – Damian Blackburn.

Friends and business contacts attending, heard from members of the Oromo community about the importance of this social enterprise in restoring their dignity and providing much needed UK work experience for them. After much sniffing, slurping and (yes) spitting of the coffee – several more converts to this top quality coffee were made and once again, we would like to thank all involved in this event for putting your money where your mouth is and demonstrating that communities can empower themselves through fairer trading initiatives!
 What is the Oromo Coffee Company?

The LYF was first approached by a group of Oromo Ethiopian refugees who had come to the UK under a UN programme of assistance, two years ago. The LYF, possessing experience in working at a grassroots level with both producer groups and poor communities in the UK suggested that the Oromos set up their own coffee trading social enterprise and offered to support them on a voluntary basis.

Thanks to the kindness of friends such as James Purnell (then Minister for Work and Pensions) and a number of local businesses who made ‘in kind’ donations (not least the marvellous Bolling Coffee) we were able to launch the OCC’s first batch of coffee – marking the OCC out as the UK’s first Refugee-Owned Fairtrade and Organic Coffee social enterprise.

Two years on – the retail and catering successes of OCC are growing.  In addition to cafés and delis – ethically-committed shops (such as the Fair Traders co-op in Holmfirth) now serve and supply the coffee in the North of England.  Now, with a little promotional help from two LYF entrepreneurial fans (who wish to remain   anonymous but who have resorted to old-fashioned ‘doorstep selling’!)  the South East is now arriving on the  scene.  With the Duke of Cambridge in Islington, Friends House in Euston, the Methodist International Conference Centre – not to mention St Alban’s Abbey – you can now get a cup of this ‘high end’ Oromo  Ethiopian coffee, without having to board the West or East Coast train line!

For more information on the coffee  – how to buy it etc – contact details are available at www.oromocoffee.org

 

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Latest News, Lorna Young Foundation Enterprise, Updates | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Lambeth Palace and the LYF approach to Islam and Ethical Trading

08/08/2011 – 10:54 pm

The LYF was pleased to see that 2 years after we held the first Fair Trade Eid Party (attended by over 200 members of the local Muslim community in Lockwood, Huddersfield) in partnership with our friends at the Pakistani Youth Forum,  the Fairtrade Foundation has initiated its first ‘Fair Trade and Islam Ramadan’ campaign. In addition to this, our community based NJU work, which focuses on bringing young people who are both Muslim, Christian and of no religion together in the name of ethical
trading has also been brought to the attention of the Christian Muslim Forum established by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In June 2011, the LYF was asked to attend a special workshops held by the Christian Muslim Youth Forum, which focussed on trade justice.  The LYF has been a supporter of the work of Dr Rowan Williams’ Christian Muslim Forum (CMF) for some time.  The CMF
attended the launch of the LYF’s refugee driven initiative, the Oromo Coffee Company at Westminster in 2009.  In addition to this, LYF’s Ian Agnew, recently became an Ariane de Rothschild Fellow though his work via the LYF to utilise ethical trading as a method of bridging the differences between Muslim and Jewish communities.

The CMF organised event was sponsored by MADE in Europe and took place at Lambeth Palace in June. Participants issued a joint statement, which called upon the UK government to take the lead in ending the EU’s distorting cotton subsidies (which prevent
over 10 million African farmers from trading fairly, thereby forcing them into poverty).

Christina Longden of the LYF commented ‘It was really refreshing to meet such a well-informed and driven group of young people. There were lots of participants – whether they were Muslims or Christians – who recognised that in the UK we have much to be
proud of in terms of expanding the ethical trading sector, but who now feel that they want to do something more than just purchasing a certified product and who are excited by our approach to empowering communities both here and in developing countries to truly understand the world of ethical trading and the many opportunities available to them in terms of enterprise and grassroots
initiatives’.

To see the CMF’s statement on trade justice – go to http://bit.ly/jnUFgl

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Latest News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Smallholder Support Network Africa – Update

08/08/2011 – 10:46 pm

The LYF Smallholder Support Network (SSN) in Kenya and Ethiopia has received excellent feedback from independent evaluators after only 1 year in operation!

Cristina Talens, Project Manager for LYF’s SSN tells us more about how the exciting progress of the very unique SSN:

Our SSN project has two overarching aims; firstly, to build ‘south to south capacity’ of training institutions to work
with smallholder organisations and secondly to empower smallholder organisations by providing training and access to relevant information on their crops and supply chains. This will assist them with making better business decisions.

Green coffee awaiting export from a Kenyan coffee mill

When asked about its effectiveness, the evaluator stated that the project had achieved its objectives in terms of establishing a  ‘Peer Partnership’ between Ambo University College (Ethiopia) and the Nyeri Technical Training Institute -NTTI  (Kenya) and in developing training course materials to improve governance, performance and efficiency of coffee cooperatives (through identification of the information and training needs of coffee smallholders – youth, women, members, staff, board representatives). The evaluation found that the project was well structured, key stakeholders were involved at every stage and that a great deal of learning exchange took place between both institutions.  The report also stated that;

“ The LYF recognised through investigatory research that coffee cooperatives in Nyeri lack sufficient business, marketing, governance and organisational skills in order to be able to compete effectively in the market place….LYF therefore has initiated and fully developed linkage between NTTI Kenya and AUC Ethiopia, both educational entities in coffee growing regions of their respective countries for exchange programs whose singular objective is to empower smallholder coffee growers through appropriate training.Five draft modules have been developed covering the most critical areas the farmers need capacity building, namely, Sales and Marketing, Cooperative governance, Entrepreneurship in cooperatives,  Cooperative Development and extension, and Sustainability and Ethical trade.”

All of the LYF Team and Board were delighted to hear that the first year of SSN has been successful and we are grateful to Co-op Africa Challenge Fund (ILO) for providing a small grant in order to carry out the work.  In our last newsletter we announced that
Comic Relief have provided an international grant in order to be able to continue the work for a further 2 years – but as always – our ambition means that we are working to an extremely tight budget, so your donations are VERY much welcomed and VERY much needed!

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Farmer Extension Programme | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

LYF’s Youth Enterprise programme new name; ‘NOT JUST US’!

08/08/2011 – 10:33 pm

We chose this name because of the programme’s mission to not only be about the ‘individual’ but about whole communities, and to overcome the stereotype of young people not being concerned about the bigger picture of their local and global communities.

We have been very busy setting up 2 new Not Just Us youth enterprise groups. Laura has been working with a group of 10 young people in Leeds and Jo has been working with a women’s group in Doncaster. The Doncaster group was launched at the beginning of February in partnership with Platform 51. This is a women’s group with 9 members who are all from the most deprived wards of Doncaster and are not in employment, education or training (NEET). The Leeds group began in January and is made up of 10 young people from different neighbourhoods in Leeds. Our Huddersfield pilot group – known as the Young Ethical Pioneers – is still going strong and has recently acquired two new members!

Over the last few months the Not Just Us froup members have been working hard to learn about ethical trade and business approaches that benefit whole communities. They have been running events in their communities to raise awareness about the plight of smallholders in developing countries and promote the idea of ‘ethical purchasing’.

Leeds NJU members meet MP Hilary Benn at a fair trade event held at Leeds University

During fair trade fortnight the groups were busy and running community events; the Doncaster group sold ethical goods in the Corn Exchange of Doncaster market, and they helped to organise a showing of the film ‘Black Gold’ at a local theatre.  The Leeds group ran ethical food stalls at Hillside Enterprise centre in Beeston and at Leeds Met University. Both groups appeared on their local radios – SINE FM in Doncaster and South Leeds Community Radio – to talk about their enterprising activities.

In April some of the young people had the opportunity to go away to the Lake District on a fantastic residential with Leeds Development Education Centre, and during this weekend they took part in a whole range of activities on trade justice issues and workshops on ethical trading. They had a guest speaker visit them, LYF volunteer Damian Grumpy Mule who ran a workshop on ethical products.

NJU members on the residential in the Lake District with Leeds Development Education Centre and the Lorna Young Foundation

Not Just Us Doncaster were invited to attend a civic reception to welcome Archbishop of York to South Yorkshire.

(left to right) Peter Davis (Elected Mayor of Doncaster), The Archbishop of York, Mary Bogusowski, Jade Deuchar

Dr John Sentamu was received in Doncaster and all involved aimed to give the Archbishop an idea of some the issues affecting people’s lives in the Diocese. Our NJU group members – Jade Deuchar and Mary Bogusowski (pictured) chatted to the Archbishop about how they are developing their very own enterprise whilst receiving support from The Lorna Young Foundation and our partners – Platform 51. Mary said of the event: “We enjoyed meeting the Archbishop.  It gave us the chance to discuss our work and he was genuinely interested.  We were also really happy that we were one of the only groups asked to represent the community sector in Doncaster at the reception”

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Not Just Us | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Kenyan Coffee Farmers Can add Value by Serving Local Market

25/07/2011 – 10:04 am

It’s a long time coming but Kenyan coffee farmers may soon be able to serve the local coffee market, realising greater value for their coffee than simply growing and selling the raw beans for export. However, this adds greater pressure on them to build their business skills. http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate+News/Growers+get+nod+to+roast+coffee+beans+for+local+market/-/539550/1206870/-/403dd4z/-/

By Ian Agnew | Posted in Black Gold Foundation, Farmer Extension Programme | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)