Olive Co-operative Ltd: Statement of ethical intent

Olive Co-operative's primary aim is to raise awareness of the situation in Palestine and Israel, to educate people in the UK and our other customer countries about these issues, and to support the Palestinian economy at a time when military occupation has made much economic activity difficult and dangerous. As such, we aim not only to minimise our negative impacts on the areas where we conduct our tours, but to have positive effects.

Environmental impacts

Olive Co-operative is based at Bridge 5 Mill, a community environmental centre in Manchester which is housed in an old mill building renovated according to cutting-edge environmental principles and which uses low-impact sources of power. We re-use or recycle waste paper and use re-used or recycled paper in the vast majority of printing/writing etc. We do not have a printed brochure, and the small leaflets we do put out are printed on recycled paper. None of the main Olive workers drive cars.

Olive Co-operative tours exist to introduce people to progressive Palestinian and Israeli projects. As a rule these include: visiting community centres in Palestinian refugee camps; meeting with Israeli army refusers; visiting joint-community groups bringing children together to encounter each other's cultures and experiences. Some of these visits may include environmental aspects, such as witnessing the destruction of olive groves by the Israeli military and settlers or visiting positive environmental projects. This is something which Olive intends to expand on - we are presently building links with more organisations to cover a wider range of issues, and these include projects concerned with renewable energy, water conservation, organic agriculture, women's issues and academic access.

Olive Co-operative recognises the negative environmental impacts of flying as a means of travel, and as such we include the option of a payment to Climate Care's fund on our booking forms.

Economic impacts

Olive Co-operative mainly works with local guides in the areas we visit. Our primary partner in the region is the Alternative Tourism Group, a well-established Palestinian company which runs tours in the West Bank based in its offices in Beit Sahour. Other providers of guides and day-trips include Israeli campaign organisations whose tours show the situation of the Wall, settlements etc in the Jerusalem area and Windows, a joint-community reconciliation/education project. As we expand our operations into other West Bank cities we expect to source more local guides at these sites.

All of our suppliers are themselves locally based and their employees/representatives are local people who are either regular employees or independent local sub-contractors. All the accommodations we use are independently run and generally owned by families or individuals from the area; our tour guests also spend at least one and often more nights staying with Palestinian and/or Israeli families who are paid for their services.
Olive tour guests are often taken to organisations and businesses seeking to facilitate income generation in the difficult circumstances of military occupation in Palestine. These include women's handcrafts collectives, an olive wood carving co-operative and factories making traditional local products such as Nablus soap. Olive Co-operative is also involved in efforts to build Fair Trade links with Palestine and some of our tours include meeting producers involved in this, such as olive oil farmers. Olive Co-operative itself also sells a range of fairly traded Palestinian products from a range of suppliers, including workers' co-operatives and the Atfaluna Deaf Children's Society in Gaza. Olive is constantly involved in developing new ways of contributing to the sustainable Palestinian economy, for instance through the sponsorship of tree planting projects to replenish groves damaged by the building of the Separation Wall and settlements.

Social impacts

Travellers with Olive are supplied before their trip with a substantial amount of information about the situation in Palestine and Israel, both for their own security and comfort and for the sake of the people they will be visiting - this includes, for example, information on not communicating the details of Palestinian individuals to the Israeli authorities. The tours themselves are also, of course, focused on increasing people's knowledge and experience of the 'social and political situation in each destination.' Travellers are also advised of the culturally appropriate ways to behave in different areas, depending on issues such as the religious tendencies of individual towns etc, and cultural sensitivity in areas such as dress, public touching and eating is stressed. Our structure also includes an induction meeting with a local guide (usually from ATG) at the beginning of each tour and the presence of a local guide at all relevant times.

Almost all of the traveller destinations on Olive tours constitute "local social projects with direct or indirect benefits to the host community." These include projects promoting cross-cultural communication between children, supporting refusers of Israeli military service, providing medical care in Palestinian communities and opening up educational opportunities for children in Palestinian refugee camps.

Operation

Olive Co-operative will ensure that its responsible tourism policy is posted on the company website, where it can be viewed by all staff and prospective customers, as well as suppliers and possible partners. At present the complaints policy for Olive consists of directing such comments and problems to the Customer Liaison manager, or to another member of staff if the complaint regards this person. If problems cannot be resolved within the co-operative itself there are mechanisms for them to be referred to the Advisory Group.

Operational practice

Olive Co-operative is a young company. We believe that our initial setup included a wide range of responsible aims, i.e. to educate and inform about the current situation in Palestine and Israel and to bring material benefits to Palestinian communities and enterprises. We also believe that the background of most of our staff, in various ethical and campaign sectors, gives us a positive outlook and a good set of basic assumptions and practices around, for example, recycling and energy use. We also believe that we are now developing in a way which explores other ethical areas and which is also realistic and achievable, for instance introducing climate issues into our booking process to encourage travellers to contribute towards offsetting their flights.

Olive Co-operative's ethical stance with regards to both its business practice and wider political aims is a key part of Olive's identity and is, and will be, displayed prominently throughout our information and promotional material.

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