Project Description

My friend Jakir is a tea stall owner in Dhaka. Jakir is disabled, unable to easily walk. Managing a tea stall is not only physically difficult, but economically impossible. Jakir’s customers pay by credit. They drink tea, he writes down their names, they pay later. The problem is many of his customers do not pay their tab. Jakir struggles already to run his shop, and now he finds that his business is failing.

But that precedent can change. We propose to construct a self-serving tea stall, modeled after a century old trust-based system in Kolkata. In this stall, the tea seller sets out the tea, milk, water, and other ingredients needed for the day. Then he leaves. Customers make their own tea and place money in a box for the stall owner. It’s an honor system, and there’s evidence that it works. The stall will be unique in appearance, so that the community remembers it’s there and always pays, and will use clay cups to support a longstanding tradition. For someone with Jakir’s disabilities, such a system is invaluable. It allows disabled people to run a business without having to stand for long hours and manage customers. But the ethics do not end there. Bangladesh tea garden workers are paid a daily wage of 150 taka—the lowest salary for tea laborers in the world. We propose to create a partnership between disabled tea sellers and independent tea garden workers that allows our stall to provide high quality, ethically sourced tea, sold in locally made clay cups.