Our story
THIRST was created by a child of the tea plantations whose work in the field of business and human rights brought her a full circle back to tea. It has become a focal point for a wide range of stakeholders seeking to improve the lives of the women and men working in tea.
Image: Sabita Banerji
Born on a tea plantation
THIRST’s founder, Sabita Banerji, was born on a tea plantation in Munnar, South India, where her father was a manager. He later became an economist for the tea company, and the family moved to another plantation in Assam. Her childhood friends were the children of both managers and workers, and she witnessed at first hand the inequity of life on a plantation.
Inspired by an uprising
In 2015, having worked for over two decades in international development and then for the Ethical Trading Initiative, Sabita took a detour to Munnar during a work trip to South India. Her visit coincided with the uprising of women tea plantation workers calling themselves Pempilai Orumai (Unity of Women), protesting against their pay and conditions. (Coincidentally, it was at the same time that the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt reported on apalling conditions for plantation workers in Assam).
Witnessing this protest, combined with her roots in the tea sector and her profession in ethical trade, generated in Sabita a strong vocation to do something to help… and the International Roundtable for Sustainable Tea – THIRST – was born.
Image: Gen. Sec. Pempilai Orumai trade union, Rajeshwari Jolly (left), with THIRST founder Sabita Banerji 2018
Bringing people together
Sabita reached out to her extensive network in the ethical trade, fair trade and international development world. In September 2018, she invited a group of civil society organisations to come together just before the Ethical Tea Partnership’s international TeamUp conference in London.
The inaugural meeting was attended by Accountability Counsel, Care International, Ethical Trading Initiative, Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Foundation, Forum for the Future, Living Wage Foundation, Oxfam GB, Oxfam India, Oxfam Malawi, The Plantation and Allied Workers Union of Malawi, Traidcraft and Unicef UK.
Together they agreed the goals and principles of THIRST – an NGO dedicated to improving conditions for tea workers and farmers around the world. It would achieve this by bringing together the key stakeholders – the companies, trade unions, NGOs, governments, academics, farmers and workers – to take a more cohesive approach to solving the industry’s problems.
Laying the foundations
Subsequently a Board of Trustees was formed. Its members were:
- Debbie Coulter – former Head of Programmes at the Ethical Trading Initiative and former Deputy General Secretary of the GMB Trade Union.
- Krishanti Dharmaraj – former Executive Director of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership.
- Michael Pennant-Jones – former Head of Sustainability at Finlays.
- Nikhil Subbiah a Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow.
- Stirling Smith – former Chief Technical Adviser for the International Labour Organisation in India.
(Debbie, Nikhil and Stirling are still vital members of THIRST’s Board of Trustees.)
Between them, these founding Trustees of THIRST brought deep knowledge and experience of the tea sector (from both corporate and labour perspectives), of international development, of gender issues, of the law, of industrial relations, of human rights in global supply chains and lots more.
On May 15th 2020, UK’s Charity Commission formally registered THIRST as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation.
Soon after this, we began our work on the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) of the global tea sector. Experts representing a range of tea sector stakeholders acted as advisors on the study, ensuring that it fairly represented all perspectives to provide a balanced big picture. The resulting reports now form the basis for all our work and provide an evidence-base for all those working to ensure that the tea industry is fair for all.