Who would like to join me for tea on Monday 11am at the shed in Windsor?

I met Neeraj Agawal, founder of TeaPeople.co.uk through Richard Kipling when they were looking at crowd funding for the charity they are involved with. Well Richard does make exceedingly good cakes to go with the quite beautiful teas Neeraj is bringing to Berkshire.

In the last year I’ve been getting into my green tea after a friend of mind told me how statistically in China they have the lowest cancer rates, the highest smoking rates and they drink more green tea than the rest of the world… it got me through that initial milk & sugar barrier to drinking tea at its best.

My daughter (20) associates drinking tea without milk to drinking beer… “Boys don’t really like the taste of beer, they just think they are cool drinking it…” she may have a point and that’s why me and the Mrs enjoy a bottle of Sparkling Shiraz on a Friday night!

Back to Monday… I figure drinking tea alone when sampling is fairly pointless as it’s just my opinion… we need more opinions… 3 or 4 would be good.

You up for tea in Windsor 11am on Monday? Fill in the form or call me on 07717 820823.

Thank you.

Jon

Tea People – Their Story

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The beginning

Tea People was founded by Neeraj and Vishaka, a husband wife duo along with their Scottish friend Gillian. Neeraj and Vishaka hail from the beautiful tea growing region of Darjeeling in India and have been living in the UK since 2005. In 2009 they came across a school in their hometown of Darjeeling that was in urgent need of some repairs and assistance. The school, known as MSK School, Sonadaserved the children of tea garden workers and other impoverished villagers in the area.

As the duo attributed their own success to the education they had received and firmly believed in the role of education in providing equal opportunities and in alleviating poverty, they decided to help. They teamed up with Gillian who at that time was running her own charity. The three of them together raised the required funds and provided the much needed assistance.

 

The ‘big idea’

While all of this was great fun and was extremely satisfying, there was something that kept bothering the three of us. First, we realized that the scale of the problem was much bigger and way beyond that one school. Second that fundraising alone was not a very sustainable way of addressing the issue.

Being dreamers, all of us, we had very special “pyjama party” – meetings where we discussed our world changing ideas! Our light bulb moment came during one such  pyjama party where the aroma of our Darjeeling inspired us to form a social enterprise that would use tea as the medium for bringing about a positive social change. The idea was to bring the taste of a wide variety of fine, specialty and flavoured tea to the tea lovers of the world and give them a chance to change the lives of the poor children and empower communities living in and around the tea growing areas.This is how Tea People was born!

We are hence set up as a social enterprise and have committed to put aside at least 50% of our net profits towards our social causes. 

The real ‘tea people’

Tea People is now home to an expanding range of a wide variety of tea catering to the different tea needs of all kinds of ‘tea people’ out there. However, all of this would not have been possible without the help, support and encouragement we have received over the course of our journey. For instance,

– a group of student volunteers from the University of St. Andrew’s helped us with our initial branding and designing.

– IndusNet Technologies, an award winning web development company provided us with the much needed support in developing our website as a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility.

There have been many others who lent us a hand, only because they believed in us and in our cause. For us, Tea People is not just about selling tea. It’s about all the people who share our passion and excitement for all things tea, the people whose livelihoods are connected to tea, all lovers of tea and anyone who would like to make a difference to the lives of those who are in need. These, for us are the real ‘tea people’.

So put the kettle on, become one of the ‘tea people’ and together we can make tea into a powerful medium for bringing about a positive social change.