after a nice little welcome 'kuier' for rebecca yesterday, the 6 already south african glennies have made their way to their offices, at least i suppose so. well, 5, to be honest. dear aire is struck down with the flu and as such i am enjoying (more or less) solitude in our attic office which is just being heated up massively by the sun.
so, what have we done throughout the last week? basically: wine tasting. with it: assessment of joint bodies on fair trade certified wine farms. to give some background hints on the encrypted language: joint bodies are a prerequisite in order to be certified fair trade. it's an assembly consisting of workers and the management (more workers though), and members of it are being elected by all the workers. this body first and foremost decides what to do with the fair trade premium but also aims at close collaboration and exchange of ideas and knowledge with the top level positions (note: this is in case of hired labour organisations, such as wine farms are. for small farmers, like the heiveld cooperative in nieuwoudtville, members of the cooperative form the joint body).
accordingly we went with lazarus pick-up, which fortunately has a tarp over its back - we already thought we'd be going on the bakkie in the pouring rain...he likes giving out information in sparse portions - exploring the western cape. first to a farm close to worcester, then to a conference in stellenbosch where noel from EMG was giving lots of background information on the heiveld cooperative and then to another wine farm close to paarl. all along the way: snow-capped mountains.
the basic idea of the trips was to find out whether the joint bodies will need more training on the fair trade standards and the issue itself. and yes, there obviously is the need. especially with those big estates not everything is working according to plan...so this was a good excercise on seeing what's happening on the producer side of fair trade.
we also went to nieuwoudtville, though only for one day on monday, as there was a board meeting of the farmers. we got to know noel from EMG and his wife bettina who's having her own NGO, indigo, and it seems there a quite a few possibilities to become active there. all we need to figure out now is WHEN we will be going there, in order not to miss the wild flowers! everybody promised us that because of the heavy rains, it will be 'mindblowing'.
this week we'll be starting with a market research about recognition and awareness of fair trade and fair traded goods in south africa (there are fair traded wines in the supermarkets, for instance). this will be together with arianna, the intern from FTSA (fair trade south africa), which is an NGO with offices just down the road and with the goal to promote and establish fair traded goals in SA. doesn't that sound good?
bw: aire and i are now residents of observatory. this is where we reside:
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