Place In The Sun sponsors socio-environmental road trip
03 Jan 2012Topics: Distell, Fair Label Organisation, Fairtrade, FLO, FLO-CERT, Place in the Sun, Roger Wynne-Dyke, The EXPEDITION Project, wine
One of South Africa’s newest global wine brands, Place in the Sun, is partnering with social and environmental campaign The EXPEDITION Project to inspire sustainable change across the country.
The Distell-owned wine brand, launched internationally last year, is the lead sponsor of the project conceived by Cape Town social activist Roger Wynne-Dyke.
Essentially a road trip around the perimeter of South Africa, the year-long initiative visits 200 towns in 365 days, and documents the challenges and opportunities affecting the communities it encounters with a view to help develop practical and relevant solutions.
The journey will be visually chronicled, and culminate in a TV and online series about the journey, the people and the energy, as well as the wildlife, climate, cultural and business projects that emerge.
"Place in the Sun is inspired by the imaginative but also very practical and positive approach of The EXPEDITION Project," says Deidre Samson, global marketing manager. "Though the brand is making the journey possible, the initiative is also encouraging people in their personal capacity to support the project either materially or by donating time or skills.
"Through the Place in the Sun website, we have already embarked on a similar strategy, encouraging wine lovers to converse online about projects they know of, that have been developed to make a difference. The website provides a forum to express support for individual and broader programmes that help people and communities literally find their place in the sun."
Starting and ending in Cape Town, members of The EXPEDITION Project will travel from Cape Town along the West Coast to the Namibian border, then north-east across the country to the Mozambican border before finally turning south-west back to Cape Town.
Stopovers include towns and small villages from Alldays to Zeerust. In every instance the project will take a souvenir that encapsulates the community encountered while leaving something behind to seed the process of creative problem-solving.
Says Wynne-Dyke: "The first year is a journey of groundwork, identifying areas that can be meaningfully addressed. Our plan is not to impose solutions but to listen to the communities we meet and, based on what we discover, help develop a new way of thinking, where people find ways to create their own change.
"Our role will be to inspire and facilitate change by showing what is possible, by networking, bringing skills, facilities and equipment to those who need them to make their solutions a viable, sustainable reality.”
Place in the Sun, through its Fairtrade accreditation, is simultaneously working to accelerate upliftment among farm communities. The wine range - one white and three reds - is made from grapes sourced from Cape vineyards that have been certified by FLO-CERT under Fair Label Organisation (FLO) standards.
Growers are paid a premium for their fruit, and proceeds are directed towards social development of wine-farm communities, who decide on how the funds are to be spent.
Leave a Comment:
The hardcopy version of Platter's Guide is South Africa's best-selling wine annual, with over 1.4 million copies sold to date.
0
0