大象传媒

We planned to visit all the tourist hotspots including Kandy, Colombo, Anuradhapura and Sigiriya.

In the second week of our honeymoon, we were scheduled to stay overnight at a converted tea factory (a gift from Tim鈥檚 parents) in Nuwara Eliya, the tea growing region of Sri Lanka.

Our drive up to the hotel was truly beautiful with sprawling green hills as far as the eye could see and waterfalls dotted sporadically amongst the many plantations.

As we drove up through the hills towards the hotel, I noticed what looked like white flags in the high-above-fields of the tea plantations.

Puzzled, I asked our driver, Hasantha, what the white flags meant.

The richest people of Sri Lanka come to this area to holiday because the climate is cool and the air is very clean, but the people who live here are very, very poor. Most people work the plantation for not very much money. Their houses are in a poor state and many families live in little shacks with no running water or electricity...

As many families are poor, their children leave school at an early age, maybe about 12 or 13 years to help support the family. The parents don鈥檛 like this, they want their children to have a better life, they too want a better life but what can they do? 鈥�

He continued to explain about the poverty of the region and the conditions for many of the tea pickers as we continued to the hotel.

Since then, both Tim and I have done some research on the tea plantations in Sri Lanka and the conditions of the people.

Whilst many tea estates have vastly improved the conditions for their workers, the majority still live in extreme poverty.

Many tea pickers earn less than a pound a day. The tea picking community mainly consists of Indian Tamils (different from the Sri Lankan Tamils of the north), which are drawn disproportionately from low-caste groups.

It was the British who first brought the Indian Tamils to the Nuwara Eliya region to pick tea 150 years ago, and then left them with no legislative rights when they withdrew from the island in 1949.

Only around 28% live in single family houses; everyone else lives in old barrack type lines rooms erected by the British which are in a dilapidated condition.

Infrastructure facilities are poor and plantation workers are vulnerable to all sorts of diseases and ill-health.

Malnutrition is widespread, anaemia is common amongst women in particular and the plantation districts have the highest mortality rates in the country for all age levels.

Alcoholism is a widespread problem on the tea estates as well as high rates of domestic and sexual abuse and, most disturbingly, the suicide rate amongst women in the region is the highest in South East Asia.

Basic education for plantation children also lags behind the rest of the country. Literacy rates and educational attainment have been lagging behind those of the rest of the population, although the gap has been narrowing over the last two decades.

Improving the quality of life

When we finally got to the hotel we were both extremely distressed about the situation of the tea pickers.

This was made worse by the luxury of the hotel we were staying in. I was very unwell on the journey up to the hotel so I went to our room but Tim went off to see the manager to see what the hotel was doing for the poor in the area.

He was gone for over an hour and I thought we were going to be kicked out -听there we were, two people from England, in a foreign country, berating the manager at our hotel about the plight of the local community!听

Tim finally came back bouncing around and very excited.

The hotel manager had spoken at length about the needs of the local community, how the hotel wanted to support projects aimed at helping the tea pickers improve their quality of life.

The manager felt that what was needed was a free education programme that taught the basics of English and IT.

This would open the doors to new job opportunities for the tea pickers and other poor people in the community.

The manager tried and failed to instigate such a programme because, as he put it, there isn鈥檛 much money in providing free education.听

Tim and I talked about this for the remainder of our honeymoon.

We stayed in contact with the hotel for advice about setting up in the area and possible sponsorship and have talked to other people in the region since, as well as businesses and charitable organisations in both the UK and Sri Lanka about the best way of approaching the project.

So here we are nearly one year on.

We have set up a charity called the Tea Leaf Trust (charity number 1123427), and bought one way tickets to Sri Lanka (we are off on the 20th January 2009), to build and run a vocational training and community centre.

We have raised just under two thirds of the money we need to build the centre (we need 拢30,000), and have embarked on a race against time to reach our target before we leave, aarrgghh!!!!

So why are we doing this?

Many friends have asked us what provoked such a strong reaction.

But even in such a short time it became clear to us that plantation workers feel they are the forgotten people; almost a forgotten nation.

Talking to them makes you realise why many have given up on life. The shocking truth is that tea is a staple of British life and a source of pain and misery for a whole community living 6000 miles away.

It underpins the inequality we came across in Sri Lanka and is responsible for poor physical and mental health and an overall reduction in the quality of life, particularly for the women of these communities, which I feel the most strongly about.

What has been done so far?

Well all of the usual and more. We have got some fantastic friends who have put their hearts and souls into helping us raise money.

People have done fun runs and sponsored walks. Some of the trustees (including Tim and myself) did a fancy dress walk up Scafell Pike including Geoff, a seventy year old!

听Tim used to be the tour driver for Reverend and the Makers (RATM) and the band very kindly did a benefit gig up in Halifax for us, where they very generously donated all the profits made on the night to the Tea Leaf Trust.

Tim, a musician in his own right, has raised money putting on gigs and selling his own album. However, we are hoping that our final event will help us reach our target, and raise the final amount that we need to build and run our centre for the first year.

We want it to be the daddy of all our events so far; the Tea Leaf Trust Charity Winter Ball.

We have put together a night filled with the best of Sri Lankan cuisine, electrifying Sri Lankan and South Indian dancing and the funkiest Motown and soul band playing in London today.

We have prizes galore including a return flight to Sri Lanka, tickets to the Opera, afternoon tea/ meals for 2, 4 and 6 in some of the finest eateries in the UK and a flat screen TV.

It promises to be a fantastic night out in one of the most beautiful London venues, the Porchester Hall in Bayswater.

The event takes place on the 22nd November and we still have tickets available. Please email us at the Tea Leaf Trust if you would like to attend the event.

You can find our email address by going to the contacts section on our website, Just click on the Tea Leaf Trust link up on the right hand side of this page.

So we raise the money for one year, what then?

If we can reach our target we can apply to charitable grant giving bodies for match funding but we need to show them that we are committed to our project.

That means raising substantial funds via our own methods. The 拢30,000 will go a long way towards instilling confidence in these funding bodies.

The Tea Leaf Trust has recently partnered with the FSI (Foundation for Social Improvement) and they are helping us identify and apply for relevant funding.

It is exciting, it is nerve racking, it is crazy but it isn鈥檛 impossible. We have created a Tea Leaf Trust website (click on the link up on the right hand side of the page) that will track our progress both in terms of fundraising events and building the centre through blog writing, videos and pictures.

Tea eh, I never thought it could be so life changing!