Hi everyone!

Please help us raise some pennies for an epic cause (Elephant Family!) as we both attempt to run the Royal Parks Half Marathon 13th October.

Although both of us have taken part in running events before (& Emma runs regularly) we only signed ourselves up a few weeks ago (!) so we need all the support & encouragement we can get!

Thanks in advance for donating & helping us reach our target! 

Emma & Krisi x 

(BB London Senior Store Manager & BB Founder)

B&B's ChariTEA Project

As you may already know we work with a different charity every quarter at BB, as a part of our ChariTEA scheme. The charity is always nominated by a team member, choosing a cause that is close to their hearts, or they feel inspired about. During this quarter we donate profits of a chosen tea sales & help raise awareness for the chosen charity. 

This quarter its the lovely Elephant Family, nominated personally by Krisi (you can read all about what these guys do and why just below.), so when their team got in touch to say they had some last min places for the marathon, did we want to do it (if we could raise £500 each!) we both jumped in! 

Who are Elephant Family? 

Set up by Mark Shand, after an incredible journey hundreds of miles across India with Tara, the Asian elephant (if you haven’t already, read his journal ‘Travels on my Elephant’), Elephant Family is a charity working passionately to protect Asian elephants and their habitat. 

Their main work focuses on raising awareness of the Asian elephants plight as well as working tirelessly to educate & support peaceful cohabitation with their human neighbours, they fund vital research and undertake conservation projects in areas where the Asian elephant now resides, to make sure they have safe habitat to live, feed & breed.

One of the things that caught my attention when learning more about Elephant Family is their project work in Assam - a region that we get lots of our black teas from! After chatting to the team we learnt that many of the tea gardens in Assam are frequented by Asian elephants, looking for a safe haven to breed. This was causing increasing friction with the plantations as they struggled to deal with this large pest in their fields. It also became very clear that tea estates actually have some pretty fundamental hazards to elephants. 

Their work in Assam / with the tea gardens aims to certify the estates as ‘Elephant Friendly’ by undertaking the following three main areas: 

• Education of the teams that own/run/work in the plantations to ensure that they understand the plight of the Asian elephant as well as what they can do to ensure they can peacefully coexist whilst also remaining safe in their daily work. They also work on education around what pesticides they can use / how to make sure it stays out of the water that the elephants drink. 

• The irrigation ditches around many tea estates are too narrow and steep for a baby elephant to be able to climb so this hazzard was seeing a 200 pound animal stuck with no way of rescue. By working with the estate owners to make these ditches elephant friendly we can ensure the elephants can peacefully come and go with their babies. 

• Perhaps the most impactful project Elephant Family are working on is the establishment of Elephant Corridors that connect vital pockets of forest so the elephants can safely travel to find new food & to breed. This has meant safely relocating some human villages to allow the elephants their habitat back. As elephants are the largest species in the forest, by looking out for them you also provide a lifeline to other endangered species like orangutans & tigers who also share their habitat and make use of the corridors.