Local Businesses Help Others ro Help Themselves

A GROUP of local business people have come together to form a not-for-profit company with the aim of helping disadvantaged people from around the world to help themselves.

The goal of ‘Ethnix’ is to locate and import products made by people willing to work their way to a better standard of living and then sell them here in the UK. What sets Ethnix apart from many other similar projects is that any profit made will be returned to the source community and invested in learning, business or social projects.

Founder member and Ethnix Director, Hilary Handley, says:”The Ethnix team is offering a hand-up rather than a hand-out to disadvantaged people around the world and you can help us do that by buying a product from our range. By giving any of the Ethnix products as gifts you will effectively give the gift three times; the first gift is buying the product in the first place and growing the producers business, the second gift is giving it to the person you bought it for and the third gift is the profit going back into the community where the producers come from.”

The first product in the Ethnix portfolio is a range of Hessian bags made by co-operatives of women who live in appalling conditions in Khayelitsha, a sprawling township near Cape Town in South Africa. The bags are all very reasonably priced and can be purchased online at www.ethnix.org or by calling Hilary on 01844 291320.

The Ethnix team is: Hilary Handley (Wildfire, Haddenham), David Handley (Thame Workholding, Long Crendon), Simon Husband (Richardsons Chartered Accountants, Thame), Cat Young (Solve the Web, Wallingford), Pascale Wood-Atkins (Wood-Atkins Commercial Law, Whitchurch), Malcolm Newdick (Riverbank IT Management, Little Haseley), Louise Brooker (Box Technologies, Bicester), Sue Harper (Independent adviser, Haddenham).