This Climate Business podcast: A fair trade in Cola - Albert Tucker, Karma Cola Foundation (edited excerpt)
Listen to the full episode here.
Vincent
“Tell us about Sierra Leone.”
Albert
“I grew up in Sierra Leone. I'm from a family who have been very principled in the development of the country historically, from colonial times to my childhood. I was very privileged because of the work my mother and my father did.. As a six-year-old, I shook hands with Haile Selassie and Kwame Nkrumah. I grew up with this idea that self-determination is important. My dear father refused to work for a government that took power by coup, so he was exiled to the UK. So I ended up in the UK, to finish my education.
“I ended up working with rioting kids in Notting Hill and found there were frustrated people, black children, black young people who didn't have opportunities. I started working with them to create what we would now call social enterprises, community accountants schemes, desktop publishing schemes, journalism training schemes, because I saw even then that the opportunity to use your skills and learn and develop yourself is what most people want”
Vincent
“How old were you at that time?
Albert
I think I went on the board of Comic Relief and Trust for London at 21. I hated it, I have to tell you, because I was blackmailed into going on it. That was because I realized chasing finances, chasing grants, chasing charity was not enough to actually make any difference.
And so I started lobbying the agencies and mobilising people to be able to get resources to do the things that were necessary, but also to do things that they didn't think were good. They wanted you to put plaster on people, not give people the opportunity to develop themselves. So in the end, I actually got used to drag the people who made the decisions into communities to sit down with people to tell people why they can't get resources.”
Vincent
“What's the connection with Sierra Leone?”
Albert
“At the time I was growing the Fairtrade movement, we created the chocolate company, Divine Chocolate, which was getting Ghana's cocoa farmers doing really well in the global market, the largest Fairtrade company. We created the largest credit union in Ghana for support small farmers. Rwanda, we got Rwanda back in the markets after the Rwanda genocide.
“After the war in Sierra Leone, I had two crazy guys in New Zealand contact me to say, we want Fairtrade cola nuts because we're going to make the best cola drink. So I said, well, as it happens, I'm in the place for cola nuts. I was trying to work out how to help young people so they don't revert back to the tendencies that created the war, trying to create opportunities.”
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