In January 2007 two Southampton Solent University students – Tiffany Irons, whose final-year project was on Fair Trade, and Ben Cotterell, recently graduated in photography – joined Bernard Carré of Vandanamu Fair Trade on a “working tour” of producer groups in the Pondicherry area.

With English-speaking Tamil friends Kala Mani and Kamala Rathnam they visited a hand-made paper works, a candle works, a marble works, and in the village of Chinna Mudaliar Chavadi, the Sathya Handicrafts sewing unit and Venkateswara Wood Industries. Tiffany especially wanted to meet the women at Sathya Handicrafts, to learn how this tsunami relief initiative had helped their recovery.
Kala and Tiffany talking to workers at the paper factory

On her return to Southampton Tiffany staged a Fair Trade fashion show at the University (see www.solent.ac.uk/csr/fairtrade/Pondicherry.aspx) and very kindly donated all the profits to the Vandanamu Fair Trade project at the Pillai Chavadi Night School, described below.

The Pillai Chavadi Night School

Every child of the village attends this school in the yard of the local temple; some young teenagers, obliged to leave day-school to take paid work, also attend it. It is run entirely by volunteers; the headmaster, a post office worker, has been awarded a Nehru commendation as a social worker of outstanding merit. The school usually refuses donations but in January 2007 it agreed to accept a Social Premium from Vandanamu Fair Trade, which argued that it owed the village income from Sathya Handicrafts cotton bags, not all distributed in the chaotic year following the tsunami. The school suggested the purchase of a portable stand-by electricity generator, as in the summer months (when city dwellers in Pondicherry use their air conditioning) there are frequent power cuts in the village, which put an end to tuition for the day.

A class at the school, and the recently-installed solar panels

However, with the profits of the Southampton Solent University students’ fashion show and other substantial donations, it became possible to purchase instead a solar-powered lighting system. Installed in June 2007, this system already meets almost half the school's energy requirements. Vandanamu Fair Trade intends to make the school self-sufficient in electricity in the near future.

Co-operative Working

The Co-operative Group has always been an enthusiastic promoter of Fair Trade: it was the first large retailer in the UK to sell Fairtrade products and it continues to offer the widest range and to sell more Fairtrade products than any other UK supermarket (for details see www.co-operative.co.uk/fairtrade). Locally, The Co-operative South-West Membership has been a prime mover of the Southampton Fair Trade Group ever since it was created, and it has always been very supportive of Vandanamu Fair Trade. It was one of the first sponsors of cotton bag production by Sathya Handicrafts - see the accompanying bag collection.

Some cotton bags sponsored by the Co-operative Group

Because the supply of cheap labour is greater than the demand in many Indian industries, most of the country's labour-force is obliged to work in the "informal economy" - without rights or protection. Ever-increasing competition, amplified by globalisation, further aggravates the economic and social realities of the working poor. Maya Organic is a development organisation in Bangalore that supports informal sector workers in their attempt to build worker-owned collective enterprises (see www.mayaorganic.com). Maya Organic's current focus on the textile industry is particularly relevant to Sathya Handicrafts and we are delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with them. In our day-to-day activities we co-operate in seeking market opportunities and Maya Organic enables us to purchase organic cotton, an increasingly scarce commodity. Most importantly we look to Maya Organic for guidance in moving towards our ultimate objective, of making Sathya Handicrafts a fully autonomous women's co-operative. Maya Organic is an accredited member of IFAT, the International Fair Trade Association.

The Jersey Parish Bags

On 1st May 2007 the small Devon town of Modbury declared itself the UK’s first “plastic-bag free town” and its shop-keepers began to use a variety of re-usable and eco-friendly alternatives, including the town’s “official” canvas shopping bag. This was prompted by the collective determination of the people of Modbury to help reduce the world’s consumption of plastic bags, currently estimated at 2 trillion per annum, of which 40% are eventually deposited in the oceans of the world. The Modbury event hit the headlines in the UK, a film about the plastic waste crisis was shown on BBC2 a few weeks later, and many other UK towns and villages began to follow suit.

Celebrating the St Lawrence parish bag in India and in Jersey

In Jersey, the Women’s Institute had been campaigning against plastic bags for some years, promoting a “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” cotton bag. The notions of sustainability and conservation of natural resources are also at the heart of the Fair Trade and Organic movements, very active in the Island. A new element perhaps in the Modbury initiative was the collective determination of a small community to take a stand on these issues and to carry a bag expressing their identity and their feelings.

A few days after the Modbury event, it was suggested at a Community Market of the Parish of St Lawrence that it should have a parish bag, encouraging people to reduce their use of plastic and expressing solidarity with the Fair Trade movement. The bags made for them by Sathya Handicrafts proved very popular, and the parishes of St John and St Ouën were quick to follow suit.

In the Parish of St Brelade, a children's competition was held for the best design, at Les Quennevais School. The delightful winning design, “My bag is greener than yours” is now on sale at the school, local shops and the parish hall, and Vandanamu Fair Trade is to produce a version of this bag for sale in the UK, with all profits going to the solar energy project at the Pillai Chavadi Night School.
Some Jersey parish bags