 Iddo i'n unigodd o'n mât ar ymddangos. C Serge! Ie wnaeth y berydio hyn gyfrifio. Roeddwn ni fydd я i'n gwybod o'ch ffordd ar gyfer o wahanol i swydd llwyth mili. Celly, rydyn ni. Rydyn ni oedd ymwneud. Felly, ar yr y chyflwyd yw Lluiz, efallai amser o'r cwestiynau chydigodd. Yn yr unig o ddifrwg o mewn i'n cael ei mewn. Fygwch ddaeth hynny, ac mae'n siar hanes o jewel fy call ac rai'n bwysig hefyd datblygu'r sgolau Ond yna arnynt gwneud ddim i fath o'r cyffredin iawn, rwy'n credu cyffredin iawn Rwy'n credu am hyn deall y cyffredin iawn ddim i'n mynd o'i'r rhyngor Cymdeithasol y gallwn gredd yn gweld ar ôl mewn cyhoedd A mae'n byw chi'n gwybod, ond mae'n ddim yn ddim eich cyffredin iawn A mae'n dだから y cefnid felly, ac mae'n dweud am ni nesaf hynny Hender shall I see this as a business conference? I was like, pleased to hear that. Business needs to have engagement, but it needs to have trade justice. We just saw brilliant talk about mobile phones, technologies that are exploitative, but trade justice is happening. They are able to connect us to the technologies. More than that, we are able to connect us to people. Felly, dydyn nhw'n ddim ychydig. Rwy'n fawr o'n gweithio. Felly, fynd i'n gweithio'r rhwng yn ysgrifennu. Felly, yna'r dda i'n meddwl i'n gweithio'r bod yn ystod o'r ddeithas eu rhai'n gwybod yng Ngôr. Byddwch chi'n cyhoeddiol yng Ngôr, fel y Ffair Traid 35 o Llyfrgellol. Felly, rwy'n gweithio'r gweithio, ymlaen i gweithio'r dweud yng Ngôr yn Palestine? Rhyf, rwy'n gweithio. That's alright. That's okay. That may be understandable. How many people here want to go? Good. A lot more, right? We take tours to Palestine so you're really welcome to go and see it. Zeytun is a trade justice company supporting Palestinians but we can do that to a certain extent. We can't do more than you guys do every day by connecting to the products that you buy. And the next little way of doing that is just come and see for yourself and come out to the West Bank and connect to the products that you're already buying. So how many of you here... I suspect this is going to be a lot less but how many people here have got used to trying Palestinian olive oil? Very few, right? And that's okay. Well it's not but it's understandable. Everyone in this room has grown up and you think about it. It's going to sound like a religious round for a second but all of you have grown up understanding that Palestinian olive oil is in every religious textbook you've ever come across, right? That'd be fair. When you talk about anointing oil, you don't really talk about going to Greece. You've got a Palestine. It's always been there. So when we started out this project we were on a challenge to reconnect that story. Not a religious one but the people behind that olive oil and those trees. And we were also facing wholesalers who were connecting to the idea of this and thought this is bold but would it work? Interesting. When did Palestinians start selling olive oil? And we were like about 3,000 years ago. And that is the reality of it that we are watching families, communities, livelihoods being destroyed and disconnected to such a point that here we're in a lovely place in Brighton and people just aren't used to it. They're not used to even thinking that it happens but it's been happening all the time. In fact it was the Romans, a different occupation a few years later but it was the Romans who took it from Palestine and Sentia to their ports in Rome, in Greece and in Spain but it was in Syria and in Palestine where olive trees grew indigenously. 68% of Palestinians are connected to olive oil and it is the biggest part of their income. It's very very difficult for a lot of people in this room to connect to farming in that way or to understand how symbolic or how important a tree can be. It's very very difficult and it's really why we try to get people to come and see. We're really watching people not just as custodians are looking at their livelihoods but they're also looking at their ancestry. When those trees are destroyed it changes their connection to the land and it feels an awful strong guilt of letting down communities that planted those trees to protect generations after them. I got involved in this in 2001, a bit like some of you here so watching it on the news, a bit concerned, not really sure what I should do mostly feeling a bit lost with it all but I did feel that it just seems relentless because somebody is really watching and it's going on throughout my lifetime and I wondered if it was ever going to change. So in 2001 I started to volunteer and go there and I started working to support international groups sometimes working in medicine support, helping amylases get through checkpoints. I was a bit rubbish at that actually but it's something that I thought was important to do. One of the things that really moved me was a couple of places. It was a city that was under siege for 100 days. I really can't explain that until you see it for yourselves but when you watch a military occupation controlling a city and nothing can move for 100 days where children cannot be near the windows just simply having volunteers to come and play with kids can change the world. It's these little connections. What I didn't discover or I didn't understand was how important olive trees were I got involved in picking olives enjoying it too. What I didn't get was how hard it is for Palestinians to access the olive groves. I grew up in a rough council state in London I didn't taste olive oil till I was at university I actually didn't know it was even healthy. What I didn't also understand is how many families need this to access the olive groves and how hard it is. At the time I was there there was over 220 checkpoints across the West Bank. That's incredible. Some of them are flying checkpoints that come overnight with bulldozers and boulders and some of them are permanent and they are across the West Bank and stopping families to be able to reach each other and they're also stopping a lot of trade. That was just in 2001 but the traditions of Palestinians was continuing. Sometimes we needed to call Israeli soldiers to be amongst the olive groves. I can't explain how weird that is but we're calling an Israeli army to be there because they're arm settlers and they want that land and they are shooting at times across towards unarmed people picking the olive groves. Trees are getting burnt and sometimes we need the presence of internationals to be there to act as buffers and that's really what we learn. It was tough. It was tough for me to watch emotionally it was tough to know that I can have a passport and I can leave any time. This can just be a pub story for another day. This was the reality that people were really facing. For this lady it was her last olive tree as you can see but prior to that her husband had had a heart attack when they came to take the trees and he passed away. This was about settlement construction when they were building more settlements that are deemed illegal by international law yet it continues and it continues and it continues. We don't see a change in that. Now it would be really easy to say well let's just focus on that. That doesn't really get us to why we're at the meeting or why we're at a business conference and why we're talking more about connections about things we can do well. So watching the land grabs was heartbreaking and we were watching people risking their lives daily just to pick their trees. Now this is a weird question but for a lot of families to be able to access the olive groves sometimes they were nearby settlements and sometimes in certain occasions some settlers would take potshots. Who in their right mind would go near their olive trees with their families to pick those trees if you knew you might get shot? Anyone? Right but if I told you that you would lose your land that a state court in Israel would deem that you're not using that land that you left it abandoned that they would then allocate it to a nearby settlement you would still pick it you'd have to and that's what we were seeing I didn't know these things families were just picking their olives not even able to sell it that shocked the hell out of me we saw three years of olive oil really good olive oil we saw three years of it under people's houses where people weren't able to trade with it at all so we were like why are you still picking it and it's because if they don't they'll lose it and they'll lose the land so that's why we needed more internationals witnessing this, being part of it none of the internationals I'd come across had ever come up with the idea of selling oil but everyone there was reacting to the occupation the constant militarisation the fear of settler harassment would get stronger but we never had a long term plan and what did I really? In 2002 in picking the olives and getting to understand the intimacies of what was happening the state of Israel really unveiled its plan to build what became the occupation wall are all of you aware of the wall? how big the wall is? has anyone got an idea in kilometres just roughly how long it might be? everyone? it's 722 kilometres long over a space that's not much more than 160 kilometres across the water supplies it takes medical support and you can see nearby settlements there and this is not the border of the green line you're not looking at the state of Israel there you're looking at Palestine being cut in half or a part of it at least it's heartbreaking to see and people become familiar with some of the images that Banksy creates as well which is a good thing because it gets people to understand what it is but actually to really understand what it is but to have a think for a second it's a serious subject but we're going to hopefully bring some positiveness to it but if some of you here had a huge giant wall that big across and you wouldn't see your families there if some of you live in Ho for example and the wall was that big and maybe you'll never see your family in Brighton that would be a crime it would be a terrible one if you could never get permission to even go to London maybe once a month and you've got to apply and you need medical support and sometimes it's allowed and sometimes it's not but when you're waiting for that medical permission you're getting more sick it's tough but it's really happening and we felt that yeah dividing families from each other that's pretty painful having families not being able to access the olive groves and support each other to be able to pick their own olives safely that's pretty painful but actually this is an economic strangulation and access to your olive groves and all of you are olive farmers all of you sell nuts all of you sell oranges and you can't do it poverty is being forced on you it's not a discussion that the world can sit and wait and decide when there is peace and when there is justice it's happening fast so we felt that we needed to understand it more and really sort of engage on it so we decided instead of just picking the olives we were a plan to sell it and we decided to unveil that great plan and I want to tell you that went smoothly or I'll be lying this is a picture of so we met with NGOs and decided to talk about this plan that we were going to sell this olive oil in the UK and we were going to bypass the wall and we were going to work with communities to tell the story and there were NGOs in Palestine that thought that was brave foolish but brave and this we decided to do it here this is a village called Deristria some of you who've been to Palestine may have seen it but that's an original village over a thousand that's original Byzantine dome and that's what I like being there because it has that history it's not trapped in looking at its content or its existence just in 70 years of conflict or occupation so we decided to do it there and to unveil the great plan that we were going to sell olive oil from Palestine into the UK so we gathered families across Palestine who came across Deristria at least and in a room there were 22 families had arrived or farmers had arrived come and meet us and it was a good meeting not an easy one but it was a good one and I'll tell you a little bit of the story of that so there families had gathered and we talked about why we were going to sell the olive oil and what we needed to do was to get the families to work as co-ops to stop trading against each other and form co-operatives and by forming co-operatives they would be able to meet trading standards we'd be able to work out or EU regulations are up against and we'd be able to work out how we could test quality and improve it and so far so good right good plan so it was an awful plan and we'll touch on why well maybe it wasn't but it's a journey and this today is about a journey right we're learning 22 farmers had gathered in that room and the local mayor said to me do you this plan you've got for us to trade together not against each other or use our separate routes some of these families get along really well some of them don't but you're asking to create a business together can I ask the front row if I just asked you to set a business up together just because I asked you would you do it and that's really what I had to process right why would they just do it just because I said so I asked I was asked two questions at first by the mayor can you if you were to bottle this oil can you guarantee there's a market in the UK for it and I thought about that for a while I'm keen not to mismanage expectations here so my answer was no you can't guarantee that I said okay alright you can't guarantee that but if we were to start pressing the oil together and stop trading against each other and work together to form these co-ops and share the money together I said could you guarantee you could bypass the wall when they built it you guys have seen it can you guarantee you've seen more of it than we can because you can travel around Palestine as an international we can't can you guarantee you could bypass the wall with our product and I thought about that for a minute I thought well I can't guarantee that no then the third question got asked which was have you even sold olive oil before my answer was no I hadn't tried it till I was at university I didn't even know it was good for you the local the local mayor he was a bit but more importantly the oldest guy in the village was actually a quite famous communist and he sort of said I don't have much in Arabic and it was funny for them and I didn't understand it we said you know I have very little faith in God these days but I have even less faith in this guy and at that point he left and everyone went with him and I was sort of left the language translation was one thing and I think wow what did I say this is a great idea come on and they left and I had to understand that and I think wow wow why did they leave this is great now everyone left except for one person and I really wanted to see a picture of him this is Taizir he is a farmer in Palestine and he had lost all his olive trees but that's not why he stayed because he was our translator and he couldn't leave but also more importantly he did believe in it he looked at me and said look you don't want to mismanage them I get that but they have gone through a million meetings like this with people with good intentions coming in and leaving you've got to come in with some guesses you don't get to just gather people as if your idea is the first idea they've ever heard and as internationals with burgundy passports you can change the world and that they are not the experts of this they are the experts of this this is the oldest olive farmers in the world they're the masters of this if we're talking about fair trade and trade justice we're only talking about connection and to learn from the people that make this stuff and show us how good it can be we needed more yes's and that wasn't easy but we went back and we did get our butts kicked a bit but we researched we did a lot of research a lot of thinking what does it mean to do this if we are going to be able to test this we've got to work out how we can trade and pay families up front if we're going to ask them to face settlements and arm settlers and militarisation and risk their families against that space they've got to know when they're picking that it matters and it's going to be sold we can only do that by paying in advance we've got to be excited about getting the organic certification why could you see in these trees well, a bit to them some of them are 800 years old some of them are 2000 who would use pesticides on any of those trees so let's be excited by that so we talked about it there was a groundswell of thinking about it and back in 2003 and 2004 during that fever pitch all of you remember one of the biggest things that was happening in the UK in 2003 anyone remember what it was pick a bowl so again of Iraq, exactly so in the invasion of Iraq we had a million and a half people taken to the streets and we used that space we talked to people we did the very first crowd sourcing before there was even a phrase and we used, there was no social media at that time the one that I knew about but we used believe it or not, Yahoo groups and we emailed them and said if you would be excited about supporting Palestinian livelihoods would you be willing to pledge money and they did and we had hundreds of people saying yes we would and from there we realised oh this might be a business we could really pull this off and then we asked the same group of people those of you who made pledges to pledge money to pay for the oil in advance so we can pay farmers in advance and surprisingly they did and from Yahoo groups and the anti-war movement as well as just lovely people in women's institute and churches we got £36,000 and that was enough to fill a container incredible right they never met us before and we had a business we had capital so we went back with some yes's and this is the team here the original Zatun team we met with communities and we came back with more affirmative ideas of how we were going to do this we made decisions with communities that could teach us we worked with co-operatives that were being formed at the same time I was Zatun it was one of them Canaan Oil which is established now and the Palestinian Fair Trade Association they got created alongside while we were putting this action together it wasn't easy but we did it we created the first and I think I've got it here and um I'm excited by this but I'll tell you why it's not exciting is this the worst very first bottle of Palestinian olive oil to reach the UK in my hands here I'm excited by that and that was 2004 when it reached the UK I get excited by this bottle for lots of reasons we don't want to silly things about it it's just as olive oil a brand is called Zatun we knew so little about business in those days we didn't even write it on our bottle it didn't occur to us we were so excited about getting a product through those checkpoints through that wall through villages we just didn't even think about that we did what we did know is that we had to move fast and it mattered we have to do things that I think could teach Pablo Escobar a thing or two about moving products to get every bottle of oil in and you've got it in your hands folks you know to get every bottle of oil here on its own is an act of resistance but we have to do back to back loading we have to get trucks that go from the west bank to another place where it crosses those borders and we have Palestinians who live in Israel and Israelis who live in Israel consciously connect to it who help unload it and go on roads that Palestinians can't use and from there we load it and we take it to ports we're at the mercy of those ports whether those ports are going to make this work or not some do some don't the only port that Palestine has that could work anyone know where that is I guess by the sea Gaza that's right the only port that Palestine has is Gaza and there is a 10-year embargo on there nothing can come in and out of there and we can't use it either we used to sell couscous from Gaza and we've not been able to since this embargo happened and it is a crime on its own but we managed to get it out of ports and that was exciting we also realised that there's such an appetite for this that we should go bigger it's funny from Trados Bank and shared interest really good institutions if you haven't come across them and they get involved in this stuff and we took the first shipment and it arrived into the UK and I want to say that should be the end of the story because it just happened that's not what happened we took that shipment and when it did arrive and I remember opening it and two thirds of the bottles were smashed true in fact a glug of oil was swimming in our feet and it was heartbreaking it mattered so much to us we had a lot of support Caroline Lucas was a big fan of getting behind this and putting some support to us and she didn't know us that well but that was heartbreaking and why am I telling you that because that was a point where we realised we can't do this this is too tough how do we control to move a product where families themselves can't tell us what it costs to move it because they don't know day by day today you might have a business and you're used to living in Brighton and you're used to trading I don't know in London but then tomorrow you can't do it and then you realise the only way you can trade it with London is to really move right round London perhaps even try to go through rumours that are happening that there's a place in Sutton that's open and you're just going to have to keep trying but then turns out that rumours exhausting to keep following you and people give up it was tough but we needed to do it those bottles were smashed and it wasn't easy I'll tell you why they were it's because it is weird and irresponsible to load up a container without pallets right who wouldn't do that but at the same time palestinians cannot trade and fill up an entire container and again we learnt this the hard way we're not commercial guys right it is weird to fill up a container and transport it somewhere without filling it all why would you not fill it all but we can't fill an entire container why because if military dogs cannot sniff and smell and jump over all of them it won't go the port won't let it go the army will control that space and it will be shut down even bottles it is impossible for palestinians to manufacture bottles without a captured economy so all bottles have to be shipped from Italy and Spain that's not easy but I'll touch on that story in a second so we discovered these things the hard way but we also knew in all the tiredness of it all that we have to keep trying we had to keep trying because we didn't have we got this far and the wall was getting bigger we ended up with a lot of media behind the story it got exciting a lot of media the Guardian newspaper called us the ethical oil barons which was nice I suppose the Guardian we had a lot of attention on it about how it was working what was happening we even ended up with the new statesman talking about it as raising a question is this the most ethical product in the world that was fantastic and we were inundated with more checks and more orders for the oil so we decided to do another container and it was worth doing this time we were going to really get the game on to know what we can load how much we can load and make sure that it gets here well so second container arrived and we went to open it up but it wasn't olive oil in fact that was a tough moment as well what opened up well our entire container it turned out had gone to Bologna and it's what I'd like to cos one country that probably doesn't need more olive oil it's Italy so that really happened it took us four months to trace that bring it back but then we were really sure we can't do this smarter people will come along to make this work and they can learn from our mistakes but it's not going to be us and as we did it we tracked it down and we had Italians learning the story it was amazing we met French groups that said can we replicate this can you show us how to do this and we're like well don't learn from us we're getting it wrong we had South Africans saying we'd like to try this we had a group internationally sharing the knowledges and every time someone said to us oh could you sell this here could you sell it there could you sell it there we want to not exist we no longer stand in a room and say who's tried Palestinian olive oil so that's what we were up against and it was a great moment to see that kind of solidarity and people getting behind it so we also got bolder we improved a lot we learnt that we needed to diversify especially if the oil gets stuck and it did we got more containers and they made it we got more media attention and we had containers that we could track and Palestine was teaching us what we needed to do families were teaching us what we needed to do we diversified in different products this is one of them it's really tasty and I'll leave it outside and you guys can try it if you want it is Zata anyone familiar watching Great British Break Off recently it was in the final and they used Zata on their bread there and what I really liked about it is no one asked and said you didn't have that poor guy saying this is Zata it was just a given when we started people hadn't heard of it now it's normal why we sell Zata is for a good reason some of the olive grows can take 20 years to make money from really to grow trees once they were destroyed as I said over a million trees were destroyed to make the wall it's huge so Zata we can grow herbs and we can make an income for women's co-operatives and we can do that in six months it's not easy but it's a start and it keeps people going and it allows us to talk about the heritage stories that Palestine still has so it grew and it started to professionalize Zata growing there, our boxes arriving this is Basema who came last year for Fair Trade Fortnight to talk about the story and again it's wonderful to have families that are able to tell the stories when visas are allowed and to get here so I'm going to fast forward a little bit 2009 was a pinnacle year right because we created the world's first fair trade olive oil it was a great moment for us it was a wonderful moment for us because I look at a bottle of olive oil and I've got one in my hands and you guys have hopefully now and I look at it and I think a couple things on this journey where we've sold thousands of bottles of olive oil right across the country and we have won soil association marks we've won best taste awards not just because of the story but because of the taste of it as Neil said earlier it became the world's first fair trade olive oil and that is amazing for me that we took that story on in fact when we went to the fair trade foundation and told them we want to do this in 2004 we said it can't be done there's never been a fair trade olive oil there's never been a fair trade product from Palestine and there's never even been a fair trade product in the existing conflict so we're going to have to wait till this is over before we can get engaged and we knew it wasn't going to get over so we said look we need to try and we need to work on that it happened it grew to that story and I look at a bottle and I hold it in my hands and you guys can do it right now is all of these marks they make a big difference they really are about connection and engagement but the little things that I think really matter is that behind every single bottle of olive oil there's a family and it's a family that can trade it's a family that can sell bypass the wall the family is still facing settlements facing militarisation but they're able to trade their products and tell their stories these are stories that are in Oxfam in Sainsbury's Whole Foods it's in ethical stores you can buy Palestinian olive oil in shops that you've never seen before I still look at a bottle you know what really excites me there's three little words on the back of the bottle and I still find that incredible on the journey because I hold up a bottle and it's a great product of Palestine and it means it exists and there are people there and they matter and it's that connection and engagement so growing really from one village a village that had a good reason to walk out and a good reason to be tired the story has grown you know across the west bank and across with support from Palestinian Fair Trade Association and co-operatives it's grown this project it's now 26 villages it's now no longer just 22 farmers with disbelief it's now over 6,000 families all being able to trade across into the UK we've won lots of awards we won social enterprise of the year in 2015 and that's exciting for me even more exciting is we won Fair Trade International Award in 2016 in Bond we even beat Ben and Jerry's for that that's ice cream right so that's exciting and I think just sort of closing it a little bit it is a journey but all good ideas are they should frighten us what are the ones that are worth doing if they don't frighten us a little bit I think that like all of you here it's going to be a struggle but you know the best ideas that we've ever had are all of them and why else would you be at the meaning if you're not looking for them or creating them but most good ideas people always say oh I wish I thought of that 20 years ago where would I be now I wish I'd done this sooner and a good idea and a connection it's like planting a tree even on a tree and the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago the second best time is now thank you