Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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Owner Katrell Christie T ucked away in Atlanta's bohemian Candler Park is a tea shop that would please both the Mad Hatter and Queen Elizabeth. But you'd never guess from its fanciful name that it's a teahouse with a serious mission: giving young women in India a better life. When owner Katrell Christie bought a neighborhood ice cream store with the intention of turning it into a tea shop, she had no plan beyond providing good tea and a place to gather. Seven years later, her entrepreneurialism has blossomed into a successful humanitarian project called The Learning Tea. The seeds of her social endeavor were there from the begin- ning, however. The day she opened her store, she put a small bookshelf out front. Customers were invited to drop off their used books, which Christie would sell and then donate profits to charity. Years later, shelf-lined Dr. Bombay's now houses more than 15,000 books. After a few years of amassing books and local attention, Christie was asked to accompany a Rotary ambassador student on a trip to India to help with a project in Hyderabad. The student needed a woman with business skills to help a group of Muslim women build a handicraft business. "I said no immediately," recalls Christie, who had little desire to visit India. "And she just kept pestering me." After a few months and a lot of nagging, Christie changed her mind and packed her bags. It was a trip that opened her eyes and drastically changed her day-to-day life as a tea shop owner. 56 Tea Almanac 2013 Christie witnessed the debilitating poverty and lack of oppor- tunity women face in many parts of India. She says she had the startling realization that by donating the equivalent of what she spent on gas each month, she could alter the course of a human life. It made her want to do more. Once the handicraft project was complete, Christie hired a translator and set out for Darjeeling, both to tour plantations and to find ways to help individual women in a more tangible way. Darjeeling is an isolated hill town, and many of its residents suffer from terrible water conditions and poverty. Of course, it's also known as the "Champagne of teas," growing and exporting some of the planet's most sought-after and expensive leaf. Once in Darjeeling, Christie began focusing her attention on orphan girls, having been frustrated with some of the patriarchal bar- riers placed on girls and women that she witnessed during her time in Hyderabad. One of the orphanages she visited housed 56 girls. Upon meet- ing each girl, Christie asked her favorite color, hobby or animal. Then, as she recalls, she asked each of them what they hoped to be when they grew up. "None of them had an answer," Christie says. "None of them could think beyond being 16." The reality that these young women didn't even have the ability to dream brought new urgency to Christie's ideas. The stories of two girls in particular were especially harrowing. Their government funding ran out at 16, and without it, the girls