Category: Podcasts

Education, Podcasts, Shop

Interview with Sally Sawaya of Meru Herbs

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Sally Sawaya of Meru Herbs, Kenya

In this episode we play 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 left university with a degree in marketing and started out as an intern with Meru Herbs. 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. 

Charity, Education, Podcasts

Rainbow Turtle Rebooted – Mary Popple interview

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Picture of Mary Popple from her LinkedIn page

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. 

Charity, Education, Fair Trade Fortnight, Podcasts

Rainbow Turtle Rebooted – John Riches Interview – Part 2

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John Riches

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.

Charity, Education, Podcasts

Rainbow Turtle Rebooted – John Riches Interview – Part 1

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John Riches of JTS, The Balmore Trust and Gavin’s Mill, talks to Rainbow Turtle about his life and fair trade.

In part 1 of a two part interview, 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, of 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 struggling in developing countries around the world.

Charity, Education, Fair Trade Fortnight, Podcasts

Rainbow Turtle Rebooted Series 2 taster

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We’re in the final stages of preparing series 2 of our podcast, Rainbow Turtle Rebooted. We thought that we’d put out a wee taster as preparation for the start.

In this new series we have interviews with:

  • John Riches, founder of JTS, Professor of Divinity and Episcopal church minister.
  • Mary Popple, member of St. Andrew’s fair trade group and chairperson of JTS.
  • Kiera Wilkins, development officer with the Scottish Fair Trade Forum and one of the founders of the Alternative Coffee Co. A social enterprise set up to link fair trade coffee producers with specialty coffee roasters in the UK.

We hope to have our first episode of this new series out for the beginning of fair trade fortnight 2023 on Monday 27th February.

Charity, Education, Podcasts

Rainbow Turtle Rebooted – Series 2

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We’re excited to announce that we’ve started planning the 2nd series of our podcast, Rainbow Turtle Rebooted. We hope to have the first episode out for the beginning of Fair Trade Fortnight 2023. Look out for our taster episode that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks.

If you’d like to be notified when our next episode is published please subscribe to our series through your favourite podcast provider.

For those of you who are new to our podcast, you can find all our previous episodes here.

Education, Podcasts

Part 2 of a throwback to the original podcast, episode 1, from 2016

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Original podcast creator, Josh Brown

We’re back to February 2016 to the original Rainbow Turtle podcast series which was previously thought to be lost. This is part 2 of that first episode which takes us to an number of interesting places:

  • Josh interviews Martin Rhodes and Graham Clark of the Scottish Fair Trade Forum at their AGM, where he also meets fair trade campaigner, Mary Alice Mansell of the Lochwinnoch fair trade group.
  • He talks to rice farmer, Howard Msukwa, from Malawi, to Ishmael Diaz, a honey producer from Guatemala, and Liam McLaughlin, former warehouse manager at JTS, the Scottish fair trade importer and supplier. 
  • Josh records MPs, Gavin Newlands and Mhairi Black, answering questions from pupils from Gryffe High School in Renfrewshire. 
  • Finally, there is a wee piece from Jings and Scrivens talking about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Please subscribe to our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google podcasts. If you like us give us a 5 star rating or leave us a comment.

Education, Podcasts

Throwback to original podcast episode 1 part 1 from 2016

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Original podcast creator, Josh Brown

This episode takes us back to February 2016 to the very first Rainbow Turtle podcast which was previously thought to be lost. Part 1 of this episode takes us on a fair trade journey:

  • It starts with founder, Liz Cotton, talking to school pupils.
  • It then chats to attendees at the Scottish Fair Trade Forum AGM,
  • Before Ross Beattie looks at fair trade in Uzbekistan and Lynsay Bellshaw talks about her average day at Rainbow Turtle. 
  • The episode finishes with an interview with rice farmer, Howard Msukwa, from Malawi.

Please subscribe to our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google podcasts. If you like us give us a 5 star rating or leave us a comment.

Education, Podcasts

Pauline Tiffen interview

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Welcome to this special Christmas episode of the Rainbow Turtle Rebooted podcast where I’m delighted to be able to interview Pauline Tiffen of the Journal of Fair Trade. Ever since I started this series I have been trying to get Pauline onto it. I first heard her speak at a Scottish Fair Trade Forum lecture back in the summer of 2020, at the height of lock down, when she spoke about the future of fair trade. It struck me then that her thinking about fair trade was on a different level to mine. 

She’s been involved in fair trade, or earlier versions of it, since the mid 1980s. She helped set up Cafe Direct and Divine Chocolate. Pauline was head hunted by the World Bank to look at ethical financing. And she currently edits the Journal of Fair Trade and is involved in the setting up of a business to business project, which links cooperative coffee farmers in landlocked Uganda and Rwanda with small coffee roasters and coffee shops around the UK.

We had a fascinating chat where she talked about her early bohemian childhood following her travelling actor father, to her studying russian in the old Soviet Union and then moving to Poland when Lech Walesa started the Solidarity revolution. I’ve decided to keep this longer podcast together in one episode just to maintain the fluidity of her interesting story. I do hope that you can find the time to listen to it and enjoy her story like I have done.

My thanks to Pauline for sharing her thoughts on fair trade and on her interesting life experiences. It was a real pleasure to interview her and I hope that you have enjoyed this episode as much as I have done. Listen out for more of our episodes, particularly for a series of talks we recorded during COP26.

Please subscribe to our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google podcasts. If you like us give us a 5 star rating or leave us a comment.

Education, Podcasts

Martin Rhodes talk on COP26 and Fair Trade Part 2

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This is the 2nd part of Martin Rhode’s talk that he gave to Rainbow Turtle at their AGM back in October. In part one he talked about the links between COP26 and Fair Trade. In this episode he answers questions from the audience and goes into some of the areas more deeply. Some of the questions he dealt with were:

  • How did we prevent the global south paying for the cost of the climate emergency, 
  • What was happening to tariffs that was preventing producers from exporting finished products rather than raw materials, 
  • And, what was the Scottish Fair Trade Forum doing after COP26?

So pour yourself a cup of tea, sit back and relax…

Please subscribe to our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and Google podcasts. If you like us, please give us a 5 star rating or leave us a comment.