J Kariithi - Director GSE Ecotours

How old are you?
29

What’s your occupation and who do you work for?
Social entrepreneur, GSE Ecotours Ltd

How long have been doing this?
Two and half years

What is it about your job that makes it ethical?
Working with local communities in Africa to enhance their livelihoods

What’s the best bit about your job?
Organising a homestays’ visit from start to finish.

What’s the worst thing?
Not having a regular pay check at the end of every month!

What have the last 12 months been like for you?
Incredible highs and incredible lows.

What were you doing before this?
Assistant programmes manager for an Environmental Consultancy firm.

What was your very first full-time job?
Customer service assistant in a Call Centre.

What advice would you give to someone wishing to embark on the same sort of work as you?
Be prepared for a lot of hardwork, also be ready to sacrifice some material comforts to get where you want.

Have you got any plans for the next 12 months you’d like to share with us?
Plenty, but I can only talk about one of them which is to expand our markets to the US and perhaps Asia & the Far East.

What do you do to relax?
Dancing, reading & of course travelling

Who do you live with?
With family members.

Whereabouts do you live?
Maidstone, Kent & Nairobi, Kenya

If you were Prime Minister, what’s the very first thing you would do?
Not sure…… perhaps offer tax credits against reduction of carbon footprints and emissions both by individuals and corporate organisations.


As cheap and easily available oil is expected to run out in the next couple of decades, what do you think will be the predominant form of transport in 2027?
I think it would still be the car but with cleaner fuel…. I might be very wrong on that though.


Have you got any guilty carbon secrets?
Yes…… don’t want to say.


What have you done that you were most proud of?
Setting up a company with high logistical outputs but with very little financial backing.


What single issue are you most concerned about in the world at large?
War and any ongoing conflicts in world make it a very unsavoury & unsafe place for everyone from Guatemala to Guernsey Island.


Which person in the public eye do you most admire and why?
Oprah Winfrey, her consistency and dedication to her career whilst overcoming a lot of hurdles to get where she is today is inspiring and provides motivation for everyone in our generation.

What’s your website address?
http://www.gse-ecotours.com/


What are your three favourite other websites of the moment?
http://www.travelmole.com/
http://www.scenestorm.com/
http://www.smartplanet.com/

Shauna Chapman - Founder of Quail

How old are you?
37


What’s your occupation and who do you work for?
I founded and own an ethical fashion label for women called Quail By Mail. I operate Quail on a full time basis from my live/work studio in Brixham, south Devon.


How long have been doing this?
1.5 years


What is it about your job that makes it ethical?
I import ethical, heritage, fairtrade and organic fabrics from India, South Africa and Indonesia and I utilise young British fashion designers and manufacturing units in Devon to produce funky, original clothing.


What’s the best bit about your job?
Standing back and looking at a finished Quail garment that has huge eco and ethical provenance that wouldn’t have otherwise existed, and then someone comes and buys it and jump up and down with glee!


What’s the worst thing?
Dealing with accounts and book keeping and being asked to present Business Plans to boring people who don’t care about what Quail is about, just if the numbers look logical.


What have the last 12 months been like for you?
I quit my full time job so that I could concentrate on Quail. I’ve been developing my clothing patterns from scratch, which takes time. But the bulk of the time is spent trying to get attention from magazines and newspapers who only love and write about the big boys, who are barely ethical or eco-friendly. I call it ‘Green Wash’.


What were you doing before this?
I used to work in the City of London.


What was your very first full-time job?
Working for a sign making company near Heathrow.


What advice would you give to someone wishing to embark on the same sort of work as you?
Save as much money as you can before you start or better yet keep working and do it on the side until you’re really ready to take the leap. Always bear in mind that the most successful people in this world all had to start somewhere.

Have you got any plans for the next 12 months you’d like to share with us?
I’d like to expand Quail By Mail to offer wholesale clothing to quality clothing boutiques. I’d also love to work with some fashion graduates from the Art & Design College in Plymouth, before they all troop off to London.

What do you do to relax?
I am a keen gardener so I have an ‘organipanico’, which is a Cuban word for an organic kitchen garden, usually in a courtyard. I also like to go to farmers markets and go for a walk on the beach.


Who do you live with?
My husband and lots and lots of indoor plants. There are pigeons in the eves too.


Whereabouts do you live?
In a GrII listed former ship’s chandlery about 50m from the sea in Brixham, South Devon (Torbay area).


If you were Prime Minister, what’s the very first thing you would do?
Cancel all orders for guns, bullets, fighter planes and aircraft carriers and assign all the soldiers and navymen to Britain’s farmers and convert all arable and grazing land to organic production. I’d make Britain the first certified organic country.


As cheap and easily available oil is expected to run out in the next couple of decades, what do you think will be the predominant form of transport in 2027?
Our feet.


Have you got any guilty carbon secrets?
I like wood-burning fireplaces.


What have you done that you were most proud of?
That I’ve stuck to my childhood thoughts that the world will be a different place if I keep my end up.


What single issue are you most concerned about in the world at large?
Over population.


Which person in the public eye do you most admire and why?
Prince Charles. Big change is ahead. Long live the Queen but I can’t wait for the King.

What’s your website address?
http://www.quailbymail.co.uk
http://quailbymail.blogspot.com


What are your three favourite other websites of the moment?
I like original people doing original things and then blogging about it:
http://www.fedbybirds.com
http://www.skinnylaminx.com/
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

Chris Dow - Development Worker and Trainer for Dynamix

How old are you?
39

What’s your occupation and who do you work for?
I am a Development Worker and Trainer for Dynamix Ltd, a creative training worker co-operative. As we are worker, manager, owners I am also a Director of the company.

How long have been doing this?
7 years

What’s the best bit about your job?
There’s an incredible diversity day to day with my job so there’s never time to get in a rut and if you do, then you have a lot of power to change things as you are your own boss (as well as everybody else of course).

What’s the worst thing?
Communication can sometimes let us down as we all lead busy lives and training doesn’t just happen 9-5. As we are almost entirely dependent on fees for our work, when things go quiet it can get a bit scary as to whether we’ll have enough money for next months wages bill…but we have been going since 1989! There are crunch moments of responsibility too particularly with personnel issues when you wish you had a boss to deal with it….

What have the last 12 months been like for you?
It’s been a very busy time for us in the last 12 months. We’ve had 2 major contracts running, one with the Welsh Assembly delivering training around participation and one with Play Wales helping them to design play work training. As well as helping the project management of these contracts I’ve been sorting out the development of our own training space below our office, getting a new web site designed, filling in tenders……

What were you doing before?
I was a community based environmental projects officer for the local council.

What was your very first full-time job?
A countryside ranger for a local nature reserve.

Have you got any plans for the next 12 months you’d like to share with us?
Once we get the website online, we’d like to use it as a way of publishing some of our training activities – over the years we’ve designed a huge quantity of material, currently residing on our computer server. We’re also developing more international and European training. We are intending a redevelopment of a project around encouraging co-operatives and social enterprises in educational settings (www.case4us.com) to see if we can help to make it a nationally available programme across the UK.

What do you do to relax?
Living on Gower is an ideal place to surf, hang out at the beach and walk along the cliffs. I’m also a keen musician too, listening and playing.

Who do you live with?
I live with my family (partner Kira and two children Max (5) and Alys (7))

Whereabouts do you live?
I live in a chalet type dwelling on Gower’s coast 10 minutes walk to the beach!

If you were Prime Minister, what’s the very first thing you do?
Devolve power to the counties – imagine the great Socialist Republic of Yorkshire (I come from Leeds originally)

Have you got any guilty carbon secrets?
I love skiing…I daren’t think about the impact of all those lifts and snow cannons, never mind getting there.

What have you done that you were most proud of?
I’ve tried to live with integrity and treat people as I’d like to be treated. Isn’t pride a sin though….

What are you most concerned about in the world at large?
Intolerance worries me….why can’t people just get on…..yes I know it isn’t that simple but come on……

Which person in the public eye do you most admire and why?
Hard to say. I admire people I know and generally speaking I don’t know anyone in the public eye. Is that a cop out? There are good people out there doing good things though….

What advice would you give to someone wishing to embark on the same sort of work as you?
You can do the same sort of work in all sort of organisations (teach or train), but if you want more control over your own destiny, in effect to be your own boss, co-operation is extremely empowering to individuals and a powerful movement for social change.

What’s your website address?
www.dynamix.ltd.uk or www.case4us.com

What are your three favourite other websites?
www.magicseaweed.com (for the surf report)
http://www.blackle.com (don’t know if it really makes a difference but it reminds you)
http://www.playwales.org.uk/ (because they need to play)