As our own blogging picks up, I'm happy to share a little of the buzz going around about SAHA in the blogging world.

First up, my colleague Jackie DeCarlo, author of The Beginners Guide to Fair Trade, blogged about SAHA and how we connected over the internet. Read her post and check out her great fair trade blog here.

Next, a profile of SAHA from Zarah Patriana at the change.org fair trade blog, part of their Faces of Fair Trade series. Our fair trade face is blushing--thanks Zarah!

Stay tuned to the blog this week for the first in my upcoming series chronicling our international fair trade certification process.

Sharon

Needless to say, it's been a hard few weeks.

It seems like the worst is over now, but we will be feeling the effects of this war for a long time. In addition to the massive civilian casualties and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the rockets that continue to fall in southern Israel, the Israeli military offensive has made Palestinian-Israeli fair trade more difficult and more important than ever. In a visit a couple weeks ago, our friends at the Za'ytun cooperative in the West Bank shared with us their fears of how their political reality will be affected, and we all worry that we might have difficulty reaching them and bringing their products into Israel if the army imposes more restrictions on movement.

So we go to protests on the weekends and we scream for justice, but at the end of the day we know the best thing we can do I get up and go to work in the morning. Moving forward is all there is to do.

Yesterday, Avi and I went to visit Amna Kanan, director of the "For You" Palestinian women's cooperative in the town of Kfar Kara, about an hour and a half north of Tel Aviv. We went to talk about expanding the products we carry from the cooperative, and to pick up this shipment of 330 jars of delicious Syrian pressed olives.

This is how cool working in fair trade is. In our world, a business lunch to discuss product expansion means we show up at Amna's house to find an incredible spread of the most delicious Palestinian food you've ever seen, all homemade in Amna's kitchen and using ingredients produced by the cooperative. I would have taken a picture before all the food was gone, but we polished it off pretty quickly (note my empty plate in the foreground).

Amna showed us some of the potential new products-- dry goods like the brown lentils and bulgur wheat she used to make her special majadera (I convinced her to give me the recipe!) After discussing it together with Amna, the most promising product seems to be bulgur, which is made from wheat hand-picked while it's still green and toasted, ground, and dried by the women of the cooperative. The cracked wheat it's made from looks like this:

It's a long process to add new products to our line, and there are many considerations to take into account. In addition to Fair Trade and quality standards, we consider packaging, cost, labor intensity, the amount to coop can produce, what we think the Israeli consumer will buy, and many other factors. We work together with our partner communities throughout the process, and of course we'll continue to work with Amna and the For You cooperative on bringing bulgur to our line. In the meantime, we picked up the seven cases of olives, checking them for quality.

Order yours quick--half of this shipment is already spoken for!

Until next time,
Sharon

Read more:

For You cooperative

Syrian Pressed Olives

Contact Us

On Friday morning, Green Action attended the fair at the Israel Green Movement's Primary Elections.  We were so lucky, as it was a beautiful sunny day and lovely to be outside and enjoy the fair.  It was a very well-attended event, with a great mixture of people.  It was wonderful to speak to so many people from a range of backgrounds, who were all interested in ecological and social change.  The SAHA stand was very popular and everyone was eager to hear about the work we do and to taste and buy our products!

The atmosphere throughtout the day was very upbeat.  There was a drumming circle in the middle of the grounds and a great mixture of music being played.  Avi Levi the director of Green Action was so inspired he started dancing and managed to encourage others to join him! 

We spoke to many people who were interested in making community partnerships with SAHA and also suggested other fairs for us to attend.  So hopefully we will be attending many more events like this.  For those of you who are interested in attending a fair check out our upcoming events. SAHA will have a stand at Hanuka Fairs in Tel Aviv at: Seminat Hakibutzim on Sunday 21/12/09 and Thursday 23/12/08 from 11am - 3pm, and at Kiryat Atidim on Thursday 23/12/08 from 9am - 5pm.  We would love to see you there!

Click here to read more about the Israel Green Movement

We are happy to announce that you can now buy Saha products in two more locations in Tel Aviv!  The shops called Teva Kol, meaning 'all nature' are located on Sheinkin 57 and Lincoln 19.  Teva Kol stocks organic, nature products; vitamins and now Saha Fair Trade!  Sheinkin is one of the main shopping streets in Tel Aviv and is the first shop on Sheinkin to stock our produce.  We hope you will visit there soon!

It is now the time for farmers to start the olive harvest. This starts in October and continues until all the olives have been picked. However, the earlier you pick the olives the better! So yesterday I went along with around 30 other volunteers to the Village of Massha (part of the Zaytun Farmers Cooperative), in the Samaria area to help the farmers to pick olives. We left Tel Aviv at 9am and drove the short distance to reach the Palestinian village well before 10am. It was an interesting drive, seeing the security barriers on approach to the check point. No one was stopping the cars approaching Palestine, it is only the cars coming into Israel that are checked. 

After a hard morning picking olives on a beautiful sunny day, we all sat down together and ate the delicious lunch prepared for us by some of the women from the village. We ate humus and fool with pita bread, salad and falafel (it was the best falafel I have had since I arrived in Israel!) and a cup of lentil soup. We were then able to hear from the farmer about the Olive Harvest, how they make the Olive Oil and the process to ensure that their olive oil is both organic and Extra Virgin. He told us that we were in fact not harvesting the olive trees from his village of Massha, as their land is on the West side of the village and is now on the other side of the separation wall. We were actually harvesting trees on land of their neighbouring village Bidiya! (also part of the Zaytun Farmers Cooperative) 

When everyone was fully fed and well rested we got back to work on picking olives. There were people on the ground under the trees picking from the low hanging branches, many people around the trees and more up high at the top of long ladders picking the olives from all directions. Around 4:30 in the afternoon, when the sun was starting to go down and we had managed to fill a van full of olives, we headed to the pressing house where they clean the olives and make them into Saha Extra Virgin Olive Oil. We were then invited to have coffee with the farmers and their families. By the end of the day I felt happy to have been part of such an important process and exhausted from all the work!

All pictures were taken by © Yasmine Soiffer 2008, www.yasminesoiffer.com

This Time, from a personal point of view:

Today, i woke up earlier then usual, burnt up my neck and enjoyed the presence of a bunch of zionist Israeli farmers. SAHA has been invited by the organizers of the first Peasant market in Tel Aviv, to exhibit and sell our products.
The first customers were a couple in their fifties.  They were enthusiastic after tasting the Za'atar and asked some questions: Is It Organic, Does it contain salt. Why is it Fair Trade and who are the talented farmers behind the product. My answer, that the old Palestinian tradition helps the Women and farmers co-op produce a high quality Za'atar was recieved in silence. They looked at each other and the woman said in almost a whisper: " wouldn't they try to poison us with the Za'atar?"

Luckily, the hundreds of preceding customers, have proven that some trust still exists between the Israelis and Palestinians.  I can not wait to meet this couple again next week.  Based on past experience, I am sure that finally they will buy the Palestinian high quality products.  I will keep you updated.

A double spread coloured article was published in Haaret'z daily paper on Wednesday, 7th of May, describing the Saha project.  The article was accompanied by beautiful pictures, taken Pro - Bono by Tom from shuki Cook design studio. Independance Day was an opportunity for the newspaper to add a  supplement about the connections between business and community.  If it was not said, Saha was proud to be the only project cooperating between Israelis and Palestinians in this supplement.

While all the other articles in the supplement described big companies assisting communities, Saha showed a new option for a relationship between business and community - a commercial partnership.  The article gave the Israeli reader a lot of interesting and new information about Fair Trade and it's local implementation.

This week on Friday, May 9th, starting at 10 am.

Local farmers' and shepherds' organic produce, home made food, arts and crafts, and live music. It's all happening at Ein Haniya Spring, on the Wallaja/Har Gilo road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The fair was arranged for a second time by The All Nations Cafe Family - promoting Palestinian Israeli cooperation through Fair Trade in Jerusalem.