The blog post below is from our friend Lizz who is an active writer and true tea enthusiast. Between her blog ‘The Tea Addicts Confessional’ and her community-based tea website ‘Stylin’ Tea’, she stays quite involved in the industry. When Lizz wrote this blog in early April, the company she was working for was closing. She was scared she was about to lose her job… and she did! Then in about 1.6 days she found a new job. To top that off, about a month later, she started Stylin’ Tea, which offers fund-raising opportunities to communities by selling tea.
Go Lizz for showing us how it’s done!
Congratulations Kenya
As I have mentioned before, my dream is to be somehow involved with the tea industry. I not only have a lot of tea in my cupboards but I also follow the trends and look under rocks for opportunities. The problem is that there is an ocean of information out there and it is impossible to know where to start. There are companies that are more than willing to help but she who is about to be unemployed is not willing to spend a frivolous nickel. Which means I read constantly and get excited about things that others might not recognize as being significant.
There was an inspiring article I read about Kenya. They worked very hard at carving their niche in the tea industry. It was a difficult economic road and they have come a long way. Tea is not the only industry that has helped but it certainly has had a major impact. So when I read that “traditional buyers of Kenya’s tea increased their volumes by 34 percent to 61.3 million kilograms in the first two months of the year from a year earlier” (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-07/pakistan-egypt-lead-kenyan-tea-buying-in-first-2-months-of-year.html), I get excited. I think, good for them. It really couldn’t come at a better time. They are currently the number three exporter of tea in the world. That certainly didn’t happen overnight.
And then I read that “for the first time, 2010 marked the year that the United States surpassed United Kingdom in tea imports thanks to the growing number of medical studies suggesting tea as the healthier beverage option” (http://allafrica.com/stories/201204020340.html).
The tea renaissance is on our shores. I raise my cup in honor of my tea drinking friends. I raise my cup to all of the tea companies worldwide that have helped promote tea in our country. And I especially raise my cup to all of the workers who toil long and hard in the fields to provide us with the beverage that is near and dear to the hearts of so many.
Happy sipping!
Lizz Taylor
http://dplizz.tumblr.com/
http://stylintea.com/store/