Please make a selection below
| |
Teddy Exports
We source our hand-made wooden items from Teddy Exports in Southern India.
The story of Teddy Exports
We would like to tell you about the wonderful work that goes on behind the scenes and to show you that not only do they produce great products, but also their work makes such a difference to the local community. Teddy Exports has been instrumental in improving the quality of life in the small Southern Indian community of Tirumangalam. The work and story of its founder, Amanda Murphy, is an excellent example of business with social responsibility and how business can promote and encourage local sustainable development.
In the beginning
Amanda Murphy was born in Ulster, Northern Ireland and from a young age, she wanted to become a vet. But after three years at the Royal Veterinary College in London, she failed an important exam. This meant that she had to leave and at 23, her ambition was at an end. She then took a management course before working at a branch of The Body Shop in Stratford.
Like many of her age, she decided that she wanted to travel and make something of her life, so she enrolled with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and was given a posting as a Livestock Officer at Sierra Leone. Just before she was due to leave, the posting was cancelled because of increasing civil unrest there. So instead, in May 1989, she took herself off to India with the idea of working in an orphanage. When she arrived she was so appalled by the human rights abuses there ,that she moved on, looking for other work.
Amanda spent four months in Southern India, falling in love with the country and the people in Tirumangalam, a village south of Madurai in Tamil Nadu province. Madurai is famous for it's temple. In Tirumangalam, she met and married a local man and set about looking for an opportunity to make money to help set up some form of social welfare. She soon recognized both the under-utilised skills of the local people and the availability of useful resources in the area - wood and cotton. But her vision was not just to make money, but also to use the business opportunity to bring about change for the most disadvantaged communities of the area. Amanda returned to Britain with the determination that she was going to sell her products to The Body Shop, a company which has similar visions as herself.
Amanda:
" Well, the upshot of it was that I had to get some money from somewhere. I decided that the local skills were so great - they had wood turning and tailoring - and I had some experience working part time at The Body Shop, so I sat in the car park of The Body Shop in Littlehampton until I could see one of the Roddicks! ... It took me 9 hours then Gordon Roddick agreed to see me."
The business started with just 5 people working from a small mud-built hut in the village - conditions were very basic and progress was slow. The lack of health facilities meant that Amanda was forced to return to England for the birth of her first child. After her son Teddy was born, she went back to India, only to discover that her husband was already married to another woman with two children. She separated from him but decided to stay in India, concentrating on the business. As profits began to come in, she shared them with her employees, hoping they would use them to start a school. Many had other priorities however, and bought themselves things like TV sets or mopeds. In 1991, the Teddy Trust was set up so that future profits could be used to invest in local community welfare, especially education and health.
Teddy Exports today
 Today Teddy Exports employs almost 350 local people and in
2005/6 had a turnover of £1.5 million. It produces a range of products for export across the world. These include:
a) Massage rollers, made from a sustainable, local wood source (acacia nilotica). There is a tree-replanting scheme in place.
b) Boxes, made from rubber wood, a sustainable wood in plentiful supply.
c) Cotton bags, shopping bags and a range of more elaborate gift bags. A screen-printing unit customises bags with specific designs or logos.
d) Other textile and wooden items such as saris, lamp stands, vases and hair scrunchies.
Workers at Teddy receive free medical care, subsidised lunch and tea in a new canteen, annual excursions and functions and a safe and pleasant working environment. There is a pension scheme and a system of housing loans. Good wages mean that workers can afford good homes, education for their children and are able to save money for the future.
In 1998 Amanda was awarded an MBE for her work. Although she has been the driving force behind the company, she has gradually handed over the general day to day running of the business, and is confident that it will continue to thrive without her should she choose to move on to fresh challenges in the future.
Main Communication Strategies
Driving this programme is
commitment to assisting and providing job opportunities to disadvantaged people,
including those living with HIV/AIDS. A non-discriminatory policy supports
efforts to actively employ people living with HIV/AIDS who would otherwise be
unable to find employment. Teddy's founder and managing director Amanda Murphy
explains that following through on this commitment: "wasn't as easy though, we
had to overcome a lot of institutional and societal prejudices." As a result of
its commercial relationship with The Body Shop International, Teddy Exports was
provided with technical assistance to develop an HIV/AIDS workplace programme.
Workers receive free medical care and a subsidised lunch and tea in the company
canteen. As part of the programme, there is also a pension scheme and a system
of housing loans.
The Teddy Trust
Through the Teddy Trust, the
company also directs a percentage of its profits to support community welfare in
the form of projects that include:
a) Disabled children are not only helped by the unit but also integrated into mainstream schooling at the Teddy School.
b) The Teddy Community Health Centre: provides
low-cost or free health care, particularly to women and children and passing
truck drivers. Antiretroviral drugs (AZT/3TC) are provided to 20 HIV/AIDS
patients through Teddy’s Care & Support Project.
c) AIDS Awareness Project: HIV/AIDS awareness
campaigns for people in the local villages, using street theatre and puppetry as
a way of communicating the message to a largely illiterate audience. The
campaign has also addressed students in over 100 schools and colleges.
d) Healthy Highway Project: two 'truckers booths'
on the main highway to southern India provide information on HIV/AIDS and
prevention to over 80,000 truck drivers (a significant vector of HIV) through
street plays, slide shows, leaflets, stickers, and condom distribution. The
street shows and the anonymous nature of the assistance are part of a strategy
to encourage the truck drivers to seek the low-cost treatment and counselling
that is provided.
e) Women in Prostitution Project: HIV/AIDS
awareness, medical assistance, and counselling provision for commercial sex
workers in southern Madurai, using peer educators. The project team works with a
network of commercial sex workers, pimps, and their clients to promote condom
use through education and innovative strategies for condom carrying by the
commercial sex workers.
 This
company's approach to raising awareness through communication is reflected in
related Teddy Trust projects, too. For example, The Teddy School opened in 1994
and upgraded to inter mediate level, now has over 450 pupils (aged 5-16) and 20
teachers. Its library includes over 5000 books as well as television and digital
video capabilities. Specially trained staff at the Day Care Centre, caters to
children with special educational needs. Children with special needs are
integrated into mainstream schooling at the Teddy School. Non-formal evening
classes are held for local children who are sent to work by their parents during
the day and cannot otherwise go to school. In addition, veterinary camps are
organised to help train local farmers in basic veterinary care and animal
husbandry.
Business - the way ahead?
Amanda married Fozzy Raghavan, another local Indian man who
was also the business development manager of Teddy Exports. They had two daughters, Tara and Tanya, sisters to Teddy.
Tragically, Fozzy was killed in a car accident in early 2002. Amanda, who
was a passenger in the car, was saved by her seat belt. Although badly
hurt, she survived and has now recovered.
In 1999, Amanda went to England to accept one of WorldAware's Business Awards. The award citation stated "Teddy Exports is an excellent example of people committed to the development of their local community who have set up an efficient, profitable, sustainable business to meet this need."
In her acceptance speech Amanda said:
"... we have really been able to change the community in Tirumangalam through our work, not just in owning a wonderful factory which has working conditions which are better than any other in the area ... we have a whole team of people who can run an export company!
Business presents the answer, I believe, to so many of the world's problems and it is time people stood up and looked what we do seriously. I hope that for anyone who has seen me today it will give them the courage to take the first step, however small, to put that first idea into practice ... there are so many people that say " I would love to do that but ... my husband won't let me ...or ...it's the children'. I have three children and they are the inspiration for me ... the world doesn't belong to us, the future belongs to them. Not just my children and your children but to all our children ... and I want a better place for all the children the world, not just a tiny majority."
For more information, please contact:
Amanda at Teddy Exports
Email: teddy@md2.vsnl.net.in or
teddy@teddyexports.net
Website: www.teddyexports.net
| |
|
