DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

There is more to man­goes as we know them. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, we eat it ripe, make chow, cur­ry it and pre­serve it. The sec­ond an­nu­al T&T Man­go Fes­ti­val, held last Sun­day at the UWI Field Sta­tion, Mt Hope, fea­tured songs, dances, soaps, cos­met­ics, can­dles, gels, del­i­ca­cies and games about man­goes. Mem­bers of the Net­work of Rur­al Women Pro­duc­ers (NR­WP) demon­strat­ed true in­no­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty by high­light­ing the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties that can be de­rived from by-prod­ucts of man­goes.

Still try­ing to broad­en their scope, small busi­ness own­ers like Rose­marie Pierre, a mas­ter nail tech­ni­cian and ed­u­ca­tor gave live demon­stra­tions of man­go man­i­cures and pedi­cures, us­ing beau­ty prod­ucts made from the in­dige­nous fruit. Hold­ing some of her in­gre­di­ents close to her chest, Pierre said she stopped us­ing oth­er beau­ty lines when she re­alised the use­ful­ness of this nat­ur­al fruit. She said man­go pro­vides ex­treme mois­ture, skin light­ing prop­er­ties and oth­er an­tiox­i­dants that were good for the skin. Pierre said all her prod­ucts were all nat­ur­al as there were no preser­v­a­tives and colour­ing in them.

"With my di­verse line of prod­ucts, which in­clude oth­er fruits, I can cus­tomise the ser­vice to suit clients with any type of skin to get the de­sired re­sults." Even though the avail­abil­i­ty of man­go was not an is­sue, the women said ac­cess­ing the raw ma­te­ri­als was dif­fi­cult.

Karen Al­leyne, a mem­ber of the Soap Sis­ters, said they were al­so fi­nan­cial­ly chal­lenged in meet­ing the cost of pack­ag­ing and la­belling. Just one year in­to their busi­ness, Al­leyne said, "The cost of raw ma­te­ri­als, la­belling and pack­ag­ing from oth­er lo­cal busi­ness­es are just too high, which, at times, forces us to im­port." "Con­se­quent­ly, we have to pay tax­es twice to Cus­toms and Ex­cise on these im­port­ed ma­te­ri­als," Al­leyne said.

"There­fore, we need greater sup­port from these larg­er lo­cal busi­ness­es in or­der to make a rea­son­able prof­it," she said. The Soap Sis­ters, who com­prise Al­leyne, Car­ol Pil­grim, Judy-May Chance and Dawn Philip, pro­duce a wide range of soaps, lo­tion, lip balm, can­dles, body scrubs and oth­er prod­ucts–all made from man­go. Gia Gas­pard-Tay­lor, pres­i­dent of the NWRP, is al­so call­ing on lo­cal busi­ness in ad­di­tion to gov­ern­ment agen­cies for fi­nan­cial sup­port in or­der to have a sus­tain­able man­go in­dus­try. "We are fo­cus­ing on ex­port­ing, but not on a large scale ba­sis as yet. We have start­ed ex­port­ing to the re­gion, but we need the as­sis­tance," she said. Gas­pard-Tay­lor said the net­work and the in­dus­try were grow­ing as more than 100 in­di­vid­u­als and groups were in­volved in the cot­tage agri-in­dus­try.

She said they were hop­ing to host the man­go fes­ti­val in one of the Caribbean is­lands, hav­ing formed part of the Caribbean Net­work for Rur­al Women Pro­duc­ers. She said ini­tia­tives like the Man­go Fes­ti­val has at­tract­ed the in­ter­est of oth­er busi­ness­es, like hote­liers. Gas­pard-Tay­lor said she hopes this in­ter­est con­tin­ues to grow in all the Caribbean is­lands to the point where their prod­ucts are reg­u­lar­ly used by ho­tel guests. The fes­ti­val was held in col­lab­o­ra­tion with NWRP, In­ter-Amer­i­ca In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA), Min­istry of Food, Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, UWI and Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.