New Directors bring Renewed Vision to JTS
Mary Popple • July 6, 2020
Buy the food. Support the work. Spread the word.
JTS is Scotland’s leading fair trade food importer, distributor and educator. Our ambition remains to ensure that small-holder food producers in the Global South receive fair recompense for the wonderful foodstuffs they produce, and that here more and more people enjoy their products and understand the importance of fairness and trade justice on our planet.
Following reorganisation in 2017 which gave us the strong long-term JTS staff team of Martin, Nicola and Jade who many of you will know, we celebrated our 10th anniversary last year. Since then we have been building the JTS Board so that we can take on the challenges of the next phase in the life of the enterprise. Joe Osman, a former Director of Traidcraft who has worked in fair trade through all his working life, joined us in the middle of last year. Joe has written a book on Traidcraft which is soon to be published which tells the story of fair trade in the UK so far. He has brought to us his huge experience of understanding and developing supply chains of foodstuffs from producers in the Global South to consumers in Britain and Europe as well as a better understanding of the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO).
I am also delighted that Karena Jarvie, who is a stalwart supporter joined the Board earlier this year. She is a long term fair trader and has a very strong understanding of the mission and beliefs of the grassroots support for JTS. She is Chairperson of the Perth and Kinross FT Zone Group and a member of Kinross Fair Trade Group as well as a Trustee of Scottish Fair Trade Forum.
We have recently been joined by Alistair Menzies. He formerly worked in senior sales and marketing positions for both Traidcraft and Divine Chocolate and thus brings with him sound commercial knowledge of the food market place and particularly an understanding of introducing ethical brands to the wider retail world.
Lastly, our Managing Director, Tracy Mitchell has joined the Board after being associated with JTS for all of its ten years. John made a brilliant appointment back then. Besides being an excellent MD to work with, Tracy embodies the ethics and enthusiasm for trade justice that JTS stands for.
We welcome all our new Board members and together with John, Robin, Terry and myself these highly motivated people bring renewed urgency and vision to JTS as we enter the post-Covid world and we seek to become a truly sustainable enterprise.
Mary, Chair of JTS (mary@jts.co.uk)
After six years of leadership, Mary Popple has retired from her role as Chair of the True Origin Board to assume the role as an ordinary board member. She leaves a legacy of steadfast, values-led leadership, resilience and commitment to Fair Trade during a period of significant transition for the social enterprise. First appointed to the True Origin Board in 2013, Mary became the first woman to take on the role of Chair in April 2019. Her journey into the position was shaped by a successful career in the IT industry and a passion for Fair Trade. Mary was an active member of the influential St Andrews Fair Trade group which successfully campaigned to designate the town as a Fairtrade area, and for The Open Golf championship to become the first UK sports tournament to commit to using Fairtrade products. This was complemented with over twenty years’ experience of involvement in other trade justice and development opportunities for women. During her six-year tenure as Chair of the True Origin board, Mary strategically led the social enterprise through a challenging external environment at a challenging time for many small businesses. Less than a year into her new role, the Covid pandemic emerged, causing significant uncertainty for staff, producers and customers as well as disruption in global supply chains. The war in Ukraine and cost-of-living crisis soon followed. Despite the challenges, under Mary’s leadership, True Origin generated over £2.3million in sales income that included £733,000 worth of Kilombero rice from Malawi. That’s equivalent to 245 tonnes or nearly 5 million servings of rice! The sale of the rice provides families in Malawi, one of the least developed countries in the world, with sustainable incomes and better food security. Mary played an instrumental role in rolling out the social enterprise’s rebrand and positioning the organisation as the go-to place for fair and fine products under the new True Origin banner. The product range subsequently increased during her tenure, solidifying True Origin’s reputation in the fine foods market. New products included a range of condiments such the soon-to-become both a customer favourite and one of Mary’s favourite products, sun-dried fig balsamic reduction as well as the popular beer bread of which over 150,000 packets were sold during her term. Mary’s leadership as Chair will also be remembered for her values-led approach, guiding the organisation to decisions with its founding fair trade principles in mind and the interests of producers always at the forefront. She invested time in expanding the board’s skillset and further developing the organisation’s robust governance procedures, upholding True Origin’s commitment to transparency with its stakeholders and leaving the organisation in a strong position to tackle future challenges. She also brought an instinctive knowledge of Fair Trade customers in Scotland and beyond to the role.
Our former Operations Manager and now volunteer, Liam McLaughlin caught up with Kenneth Mwakasungula on the challenges of being a Kilombero Rice farmer
R eflections on the recent visit of Howard Msukwa, Rice Farmer from Kaporo Smallholder Farmer Association (KASFA)
Jade and Nicola visit some of the Woman Farmer Foundation farmers to learn more about their crops and farming techniques and some of the challenges they face.
Nicola and Jade visit Eswatini Kitchen and the Woman Farmer Foundation.