Harris Freeman Foundation

In 2019, we provided the funds to build two new classrooms for a primary school in the north of Vietnam. We partnered with the local tea company, My Lam, to make this project happen.

Many of the school children’s parents work for My Lam, a company Harris Freeman has been purchasing tea from for many years.

Many of the pupils are from an ethnic background. Without an education, many of these children would find it difficult to integrate into mainstream Vietnamese culture. Education helps to break the cycle of poverty and non-inclusion.

Harris Freeman is committed to environmental stewardship and the Foundation focuses on this aspect.

In mid-2020, we made a charitable donation to the Marine Conservation Society, the UK’s leading charity for the protection of the UK’s seas, shores and wildlife. The Marine Conservation Society helps clean and conserve the beaches and the sea around the UK coast and runs educational programs. The money the Foundation has donated will fund an educational program for school children in the UK county of Dorset. The kids will learn how they can help to protect the local marine environment.

We continue to support this good cause and have an agreement in place to do so for the next three years

In 2015, a major sustainable pepper initiative was started. It is a long-term project to help up smallholder pepper farmers in Vietnam. The project is implementing the standards of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), Good Agricultural Practices of Vietnam (VietGAP), and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to ensure the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of pepper cultivation.

We are working with the local government agricultural agencies to provide agronomy training and imparting knowledge to farmers, with particular emphasis in the area of pesticides to reduce the risk to the farmers and the environment and reduce the level of pesticides in the pepper itself.

In 2016, we extended the project in an adjacent area to help 500 more farmers. We believe that it’s important to partner with other organizations to ensure a better outcome. In this project, our partner was the local office of GIZ, (ASEAN SAS Vietnam Team).

Today, we support over 1000 smallholder farmers, the majority of which are now Rainforest Alliance certified, ensuring the sustainability credentials of their pepper crops. To ensure there is a stable market for their products, Harris Freeman Vietnam has undertaken to purchase their crops.

In early 2020, the foundation donated to the Bharat Sevashram Sangha, a charity in Kolkata that was feeding people who lost their livelihoods overnight when the government ordered a last-minute lockdown due to outbreaks of Covid-19. These people were mainly migrant workers who lost their jobs in domestic and other services. We specifically donated funds to provide urgently needed food for thousands of people. Bharat Sevashram Sangha continues to provide food to over 5,000 people each day in different parts of the city.

In May 2019, cyclone Fani hit Odisha, an area in eastern India. It killed over 70 people, destroyed property, and caused many billions of dollars of damage. Through our sister company in India, we contacted a local charity and were able to quickly donate funds to help rebuild a community center.

Kotagiri is a small town situated at an altitude of 5,800 feet in the picturesque Nilgiri region of Southern India. As a result of its optimal climate and rich topsoil, this region produces high-quality black and green tea.

In 2008, we partnered with the Church of South India (C.S.I.) school, which serves nearly 850 students from 6th to 12th grade. Many of the students in the school are the children of tea farm workers. The school needed more classrooms. We built five new classrooms and a computer lab. We also raised funds to provide the classrooms with study desks and chairs.

We worked closely with the C.S.I. school representatives to ensure that the five classrooms, computer lab, and furniture provided meet their needs. The classroom, computers, and furniture provide students with additional learning sources and help them gain access to an improved curriculum.

Gia Nghĩa is a rural town located in the central highlands of Vietnam. Known for its rainy climate, it has also become an economic hub for Vietnam’s bustling pepper industry. Harris Freeman sources pepper from the region for some of the largest spice brands in the world.

As part of our commitment to facilitate quality education for the children of farm growers, Harris met with the local commission to assess their needs. We were asked to help build a foundation and drainage system for the local Nguyễn Viết Xuân Primary School. The existing foundation and drainage system were prone to flooding, which prevented the students from attending class, eventually deteriorating the existing classrooms.

In October 2011, our project was completed and over 260 students ranging from 1st to 5th grade were welcomed back to their school. The Foundation helped the school continue to provide affordable education, reduced absenteeism, and provided students with a safe playground.

Dos de Mayo is a tea and yerba mate growing region in Misiones, Argentina. Known for its proximity to Iguazú Falls, it is home to one of Harris Freeman’s largest suppliers. Recognizing yet another shortage of classrooms available to the children of tea growers, we partnered with the Victoria Jean Navajas Foundation to help build a classroom for the local General San Martin School (School 417). Established in 1957, School 417 serves over 500 students from primary to 7th grade.

Mulanje is in southern Malawi, in the center of the country’s tea growing region. Harris Freeman’s UK Division, Keith Spicer, sources tea from this region for major UK retailers. In 2013, the Harris Freeman Foundation and a partner retailer launched the SUKESA project to provide the local tea farmers with the tools and training required to improve their tea yields, improve quality and generate a sustainable income.

A partnership was created with both the Sukambizi Association Trust (SAT) – the local tea farmers association, which is a collective of smallholder farmers – and with the Lujeri Tea Estate, one of the main processors of black tea in Malawi.

Together, we:

• Built nurseries through which cuttings from the latest tea plants (purchased from the Malawi Tea Research Foundation) could be nurtured and then sold at cost to the smallholder farmers
• Trained 72 lead farmers and imparted over 5000 hours of training to smallholders on the latest tea husbandry techniques.
• Created 9 demonstration plots, in which best plantation management practices are showcased for smallholder farmers to learn from
• Combined, these nurseries, training sessions, and demonstration plots have helped us distribute over 3 million plants and train over 9,000 farmers.

On average tea growing yields increased by over 30% compared to the areas outside of the project, providing much needed extra income to the smallholder farmers and their families.

During the Vietnam War (1962-1971), 20 million gallons of Agent Orange, a chemical herbicide, were dropped in Vietnam. It was originally dropped to defoliate the jungle areas and stop the Viet Cong from using jungle trails to transport supplies to the front line. Inadvertently, the ground water used by the local farming communities was poisoned. As a result, since then, over 400,000 Vietnamese have been poisoned or maimed and over 500,000 children have been born with birth defects or abnormalities.

In the 1990s, the Vietnamese Army successfully used the Hubbard method for detoxification to build up the weak muscles of ex-servicemen who had been affected by Agent Orange. Convinced that this technique should be available to the masses, the Da Nang Association of Victims of Agent Orange (DAVA) wanted to set up a clinic that would use the Hubbard method to treat Da Nang citizens.

Harris Freeman felt compelled to partner with DAVA and help fund the clinic.
In 2014, the Harris Freeman Foundation built a 2-story, 180 square-meter clinic. The clinic includes:

• A steam room that utilizes the Hubbard method of detoxification to detoxify 30 patients every 3 weeks
• A pharmacy to disperse medication and vitamins to patients and help them build up their immune systems
• An exercise room to help patients exercise their muscles
• A lab to help monitor the health of patients
• A staff of doctors and pharmacists trained specifically to treat patients affected by Agent Orange

Hundreds of applications have been submitted by patients. These applications are reviewed by a panel of doctors to ensure that the worst affected patients are given treatment first.

The project was inaugurated in April 2014 by senior officials from Harris Freeman, one of our key customers and the local province.

Three years later the charity requested the Foundation to help build an extension to the clinic to increase its capacity by 100%. The Foundation consequently provided the funds, and today the clinic and the charity continue to help the victims of Agent Orange.

This multi-year project was funded by the Harris Freeman Foundation and the Fair Development Fund, which was setup by a major UK Retailer and the charity Comic Relief. The project also included 3 non-financial stakeholders:

• The Rungwe Smallholder Tea Growers Association (as the producer of the tea through a consortium of 11,000 small holder farmers)
• The Wakulima Tea Company (as the processor of the black tea produced by these small-holder farmers)
• Keith Spicer (as the buyer/blender/packer of the tea)

The objectives of the project were fourfold:

• Rehabilitate of a discreet 37 ha communal tea field owned by 126 smallholders which was also used as a demonstration area
• Increase efficiency and sustainability in production through best practice agriculture husbandry training
• Enable farmers to achieve higher quality crops and rely less on commercial fertilizers
• Improve smallholder farmer livelihoods

Over 11,000 small holder farmers were trained in best practice agricultural techniques from soil preparation to harvesting.

We later added a second village plot to the project and built several tea plant nurseries to provide farmers with low-cost plants.

All objectives were met, leaving the local farmers better prepared to farm tea and with more income.