John's Retirement
The time has come to hand over to Mary.
It was turning 80 that prompted John Riches to consider slowing down and retire as chairperson of the fair trade organisation that he set up ten years ago.
John, from Balmore, turned 80 on April 30, and he hands over the baton for Just Trading Scotland (JTS) to Mary Popple at the beginning of this month (May).
John’s wife Nena had worked as a doctor in rural South Africa where they’d witnessed terrible poverty and this was the catalyst for getting involved in fair trade.
Their first venture, the Balmore Coach House fair trade café and shop, was established in 1980 and it grew so much that they needed bigger storage premises.
They also saw an opportunity to distribute more goods so they set up Just Trading Scotland (JTS) in 2009, which operates from a warehouse in Paisley.
JTS started with a shipment of rice just in time for Fairtrade Fortnight. Since then they have developed partnerships with small producer groups across the world and gathered support across Scotland and the UK.
The JTS mission has always been twofold, to work with their partners who are smallholder farmers and producers in the developing world and create a UK market for their goods, and to educate UK consumers to sustain and grow the UK market for their products.
The Balmore Coach House closed in January 2017 and a new fair trade shop and café, which is run by different people, was set up in Gavin’s Mill, Milngavie, and opened in March 2017.
John said: “It has been an exciting and challenging ten years for JTS, with lots of great achievements and some tight corners.
“It’s been really rewarding to see partnerships develop over the years with people across Scotland, the UK, and farmers in Africa, particularly in Malawi.
“I will continue to promote those partnerships by cultivating some of the friendships and links that I've made through JTS.
“I’d also like to build a better understanding of where the fair trade movement is going and write about it.”
John added: “I’m confident that JTS is in capable hands with Mary leading the way.”
He is also looking forward to spending more time with his friends and family, including his nine grandchildren.
John and Nena also plan to convert the Coach House in Balmore into their new home.
Mary (65) from St Andrews, Fife, has put aside any ideas that she would enjoy a quiet retirement as she prepares to take Just Trading Scotland (JTS) into the future as chairperson of their board.
She first got involved with JTS in 2012 and has been a non-executive director since September 2013.
Mary, former chair of the St Andrew’s fair trade town group, successfully campaigned to get the Royal and Ancient golf course to run the Open as a fair trade event when it’s in St Andrews.
She also worked hard for many years to achieve fair trade status for St Andrews and is chair of the audit and risk committee as a non-executive member of Court at the University of St Andrews.
Mary has become so well noted for her work in fair trade that she is known in her home town as ‘the rice lady’ and it’s not unusual for people to turn up at her door asking to buy some of the company’s award winning Kilombero rice, which comes from Malawi.
Mary said: “Firstly I’d like to thank John and Nena for all their hard work over the years, without their vision none of this would have happened.
“Fifty per cent of the world’s poorest people are smallholder farmers, so the world remains clearly, an unfair and unjust place, which cannot be right.
“John’s boots are huge ones to fill and there’s still a lot more work to do.
“I want to build upon what John has already achieved by continuing to work ethically with our partners and bring JTS to an even wider group of people.”
JTS has sold over £2 million worth of fair trade products in the last ten years and they have imported 250 tonnes of Kilombero rice from Malawi.
Each sale of 90kg enables a rice farmer to send a child to secondary school for a year.
JTS runs a 90kg Rice Challenge all year and over 800 schools, churches and community groups have already taken part.
They provide an educational pack for each Challenge which covers areas of the Curriculum for Excellence including Fairtrade, Sustainability, Social Enterprise and Citizenship.
