The awesome way this tea brand is helping women farmers succeed.

Ally Hirschlag
04.26.18

What if, just by drinking a nice, hot cup of tea, you could be showing your support for the education and financial independence of the women who harvested the leaves to make it?

When you’re drinking specially marked boxes of Lipton® tea, that’s exactly what’s happening.

The leaves that go into your tea bags are harvested by thousands of women tea farmers in Kenya. They spend a large part of their day in the arid climate that is perfect for growing tea, combing through miles of verdant bushes on the tea farms, many of which are right by their houses.

Tea farmers in Kenya. All photos via Upworthy.

When it rains — almost every late afternoon to early evening — the area is steeped in rich smells of the tea leaves as well as jasmine and eucalyptus. It may sound like a refreshingly simple life, but many of the women are looking for just a little bit more.

The women take pride in their work and are interested in how they can use and grow their earnings to support their children, the next generation. Thankfully, almost 20 years ago, WE Charity — a nonprofit that partners with underserved communities to provide the financial literacy tools they need to create change — started to work with people in the Maasai Mara region and is expanding in order to partner with tea farmers and Lipton® to give them just that.

Maasai Mara, also known as simply “The Mara” to locals, is in Narok County, Kenya. It connects to the Serengeti National Park in the Mara Region of Tanzania, and is home to a wide spectrum of wildlife including lions, cheetahs, elephants, zebras, hippos, wildebeests, spotted hyenas, and over 500 species of birds.

The people in Maasai Mara depend on its fecund environment as much as the animals living there, but, thanks to groups like WE, they’ve got more than that to sustain them.

WE focuses on reinvigorating the five pillars a community needs to thrive — education, water, food, health, and opportunity.

They built schools for local children to attend. They established a nearby hospital. They created community farms and provided workshops to help train farmers in new planting techniques that would improve their yields. And they built water kiosks so women didn’t have to spend hours of their day walking back and forth from a well.

However, potentially the greatest impact WE has delivered to communities is through the opportunity pillar.

“We believe that by empowering women, you empower the community,” says Zeddy Kosgei, a spokeswoman for WE.

That’s why when WE partnered with Lipton®, whose Unilever farms span across Kenya, bolstering these women became one of their main goals.

The first step on the road to empowerment for these women is more financial education, which means learning how to leverage their profits in more lucrative ways. While that may sound complicated, It’s really as simple as learning to prioritize what to save, and where to spend; and learning how to gain access to start-ups funds so that they can invest in things that have a more lasting return — like livestock.

While some already have chickens and goats, getting to a point where they can purchase a cow, or more than one cow if they already had one,  can give these families enough financial leverage to send their kids to higher education institutions in Kenya.

And this sort of financial prowess isn’t a far-off goal — many Kenyan women from WE partner communities are a testament to that, as they’ve broken new ground to realize their entrepreneurial dreams.

But these women aren’t just moving the needle forward in their own communities. They’re helping encourage the other 80,000 tea farmers in Kenya to follow suit.

Here’s a look at just a few of them.

Mama Jane

Mama Jane (left) talking to Mama Nancy (right).

Known as the CEO of the Maasai Mara, Mama Jane was one of the first women to dive into the WE opportunity program and, as such, is now a mentor to many others. 10 years ago, she was living in a tiny house with her husband and six children, and they had no money to send the children to school. So, she decided to stop taking sugar in her tea so she could save 50 shillings a week.

Initially a maize farmer, and with a Grade 3 education, that was the beginning of her taking control of her financial future. With WE’s help, she formed a savings and loan group with other women in the Maasai Mara region. Over time, they began pooling their funds and buying livestock to help supplement their income from tea farming. Eventually, these investments allowed Mama Jane to put her kids through school, and one daughter is currently in college. She was even able to build a bigger house for her family.

“I wanted to show women that the small savings we were putting aside could do big things,” says Mama Jane. “We can do big things just like anyone else.”

Currently, WE has helped women cultivate over 70 savings and loan groups in the Maasai Mara region, and, Mama Jane is acting ambassador to show what is possible.

Helen Maritim

Helen has been selling tea since 1995, when she married her husband. They have eight children, all of whom are now in school. She founded a savings and loan group (which the women call a merry-go-round) because she wanted to be less reliant on her crops, which can sometimes be unpredictable in their yield due to changing weather.

“I will use the training to improve myself and my family and I will also use it to teach other women,” Helen says.

Helen hopes the training her community receives will help their merry-go-round grow so they can eventually buy a cow and a bigger home, and perhaps one day, she can even start her own shoe business.

Caroline Ngetich

Caroline always dreamed of being a doctor, but her parents, who were both tea farmers, couldn’t afford to send her to school. She started farming back in 1999 and now has four children, two in high school and two in primary school. Caroline is part of a merry-go-round in her community, but she’s never received formal financial training before.

She says she’d love to understand money and business better so she can start a business selling fruit and vegetables from her garden as well as give back to those in need in her community.

Gladys Ngetich

Gladys was actually a maize farmer until 2004, when she switched to tea because it was more profitable. A strong believer in the power of a good education, she pushes her kids to excel in school. Case in point, her daughter, who just graduated high school, is studying to become an engineer.

“The greatest thing I have been able to achieve as a tea farmer is the education of my children,” Gladys says.

After recent talks with WE and their ambassadors, like Mama Jane, Gladys is eager to learn how to better manage her money so she can one day start a clothing business. However for her, it all comes back to how far her children have come thanks to her efforts.

“I think having success in life is looking at where you’ve come from and seeing where your children are,” she says.

These women are proof that no matter where you live or what you do, you can change the status quo with a little help from your friends.

Just ask Mama Jane, who recognizes she could never have achieved all she has without a supportive group of women standing behind her.

“We achieve great things when women stand together,” Mama Jane says.

And now, everyone who buys their tea can have a hand in that. So the next time you look down at your cup of Lipton®, know that you too could be  a part of some pretty amazing accomplishments.

To learn more about the tea farms and these incredible women, check out this video:

To see how your purchase supports women in tea farming communities, look for specially marked boxes of Lipton® Tea and enter the code on we.org/Lipton.

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Florida city forecloses on man's home after fining him $30,000 for not mowing his lawn.

Youtube

Should a man lose his home because the grass in his yard grew higher than 10 inches? The city of Dunedin, Florida seems to think so.

According to the Institute of Justice, which is representing Jim Ficken, he had a very good reason for not mowing his lawn – and tried to rectify the situation as best he could.

In 2014, Jim's mom became ill and he visited her often in South Carolina to help her out. When he was away, his grass grew too long and he was cited by a code office; he cut the grass and wasn't fined.

France has started forcing supermarkets to donate food instead of throwing it away.

But several years later, this one infraction would come back to haunt him after he left to take care of him's mom's affairs after she died. The arrangements he made to have his grass cut fell through (his friend who he asked to help him out passed away unexpectedly) and that set off a chain reaction that may result in him losing his home.

The 69-year-old retiree now faces a $29,833.50 fine plus interest. Watch the video to find out just what Jim is having to deal with.

Mow Your Lawn or Lose Your House! www.youtube.com

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Michelle Obama named 'most admired woman in the world,' because of course she is.

The world can't get enough Michelle.

Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube

The world officially loves Michelle Obama.

The former first lady has overtaken the number one spot in a poll of the world's most admired women. Conducted by online research firm YouGov, the study uses international polling tools to survey people in countries around the world about who they most admire.

In the men's category, Bill Gates took the top spot, followed by Barack Obama and Jackie Chan.

In the women's category, Michelle Obama came first, followed by Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie. Obama pushed Jolie out of the number one spot she claimed last year.

Unsurprising, really, because what's not to love about Michelle Obama? She is smart, kind, funny, accomplished, a great dancer, a devoted wife and mother, and an all-around, genuinely good person.

She has remained dignified and strong in the face of rabid masses of so-called Americans who spent eight years and beyond insisting that she's a man disguised as a woman. She's endured non-stop racist memes and terrifying threats to her family. She has received far more than her fair share of cruelty, and always takes the high road. She's the one who coined, "When they go low, we go high," after all.

She came from humble beginnings and remains down to earth despite becoming a familiar face around the world. She's not much older than me, but I still want to be like Michelle Obama when I grow up.

Her memoir, Becoming, may end up being the best-selling memoir of all time, having already sold 10 million copies—a clear sign that people can't get enough Michelle, because there's no such thing as too much Michelle.

Don't like Michelle Obama? Don't care. Those of us who love her will fly our MO flags high and without apology, paying no mind to folks with cold, dead hearts who don't know a gem of a human being when they see one. There is nothing any hater can say or do to make us admire this undeniably admirable woman any less.

When it seems like the world has lost its mind—which is how it feels most days these days—I'm just going to keep coming back to this study as evidence that hope for humanity is not lost.

Here. Enjoy some real-life Michelle on Jimmy Kimmel. (GAH. WHY IS SHE SO CUTE AND AWESOME. I can't even handle it.)

Michelle & Barack Obama are Boring Now www.youtube.com

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France has started forcing supermarkets to donate food instead of throwing it away.

via EarthFix / Flickr

What will future generations never believe that we tolerated in 2019?

Dolphin and orca captivity, for sure. They'll probably shake their heads at how people died because they couldn't afford healthcare. And, they'll be completely mystified at the amount of food some people waste while others go starving.

According to Biological Diversity, "An estimated 40 percent of the food produced in the United States is wasted every year, costing households, businesses and farms about $218 billion annually."

There are so many things wrong with this.

First of all it's a waste of money for the households who throw out good food. Second, it's a waste of all of the resources that went into growing the food, including the animals who gave their lives for the meal. Third, there's something very wrong with throwing out food when one in eight Americans struggle with hunger.

Supermarkets are just as guilty of this unnecessary waste as consumers. About 10% of all food waste are supermarket products thrown out before they've reached their expiration date.

Three years ago, France took big steps to combat food waste by making a law that bans grocery stores from throwing away edible food.According to the new ordinance, stores can be fined for up to $4,500 for each infraction.

Previously, the French threw out 7.1 million tons of food. Sixty-seven percent of which was tossed by consumers, 15% by restaurants, and 11% by grocery stores.

This has created a network of over 5,000 charities that accept the food from supermarkets and donate them to charity. The law also struck down agreements between supermarkets and manufacturers that prohibited the stores from donating food to charities.

"There was one food manufacturer that was not authorized to donate the sandwiches it made for a particular supermarket brand. But now, we get 30,000 sandwiches a month from them — sandwiches that used to be thrown away," Jacques Bailet, head of the French network of food banks known as Banques Alimentaires, told NPR.

It's expected that similar laws may spread through Europe, but people are a lot less confident at it happening in the United States. The USDA believes that the biggest barrier to such a program would be cost to the charities and or supermarkets.

"The logistics of getting safe, wholesome, edible food from anywhere to people that can use it is really difficult," the organization said according to Gizmodo. "If you're having to set up a really expensive system to recover marginal amounts of food, that's not good for anybody."

Plus, the idea may seem a little too "socialist" for the average American's appetite.

"The French version is quite socialist, but I would say in a great way because you're providing a way where they [supermarkets] have to do the beneficial things not only for the environment, but from an ethical standpoint of getting healthy food to those who need it and minimizing some of the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that come when food ends up in a landfill," Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland, told NPR.

However, just because something may be socialist doesn't mean it's wrong. The greater wrong is the insane waste of money, damage to the environment, and devastation caused by hunger that can easily be avoided.

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Single dad asks his daughters for fashion advice before a date and strangers on social media responded with some helpful suggestions.

The world is dark and full of terrors, but every once in a while it graces us with something to warm our icy-cold hearts. And that is what we have today, with a single dad who went viral on Twitter after his daughter posted the photos he sent her when trying to pick out and outfit for his date. You love to see it.




After seeing these heartwarming pics, people on Twitter started suggesting this adorable man date their moms. It was essentially a mom and date matchmaking frenzy.

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