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The Philippines is a country with extreme and widespread hardship and poverty and amba nature started up in 2003 to contribute towards lessening poverty and improving lives in The Philippines by providing producer groups with access to the UK market.
We work directly with producers in the micro cottage industries including not for profit and voluntary cooperatives, foundations and ngos, and livelihood communities and community based enterprises and families.
 Sister Cynthia cm. manages
the socio-economic and pastoral program of CMBC.
Our products are made from environmentally friendly indigenous natural raw material sources using different and unusual species of grasses, leaves, plants, stalks and vines and fruit and vegetable fibres, that are in abundance or under reforestation projects, and are renewable and sustainable and not endangered, which has less impact on the environment.
Forest Nito Vine harvested and bundled
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Pina plant of the Red Spanish variety
characterised by small fruit with long leaves.
We import hand crafted homeware made from bariw leaves, which are used for making coarse mats and baskets, and from forest nito vine, a slender climbing fern that grows easily. Rich in semi-precious stones, beads and shells, our gorgeous jewellery collections are colourful and bold yet elegant and stylish. Our beautiful hand woven scarves are created from pina (pineapple) fibres, and our handbags and clutches from a variety of natural materials. We also stock bobbin lace coasters and doilies and accessories, a selection of fun and useful bags made from recycled fruit juice bags, and lovely sinamay ribbon to perfectly compliment our accented and textured handmade paper created from abaca and salago fibres (banana family).
In 2004 we were accredited by the British Association For Fair Trade Shops and supply to them, and we are also a retail member.
Our store is located at 25 Glendale Gardens corner Lymington Avenue in Leigh On Sea in Essex. At the moment we do not sell from here, only from our online shop.
If you would like to stock our products we also offer trade terms to high street and internet retail outlets. For details about opening a retailer trade accounts please see our fair trade buying guide page.
Michael and Iris are a husband and wife team and founders of amba nature. Iris is a Filipina and before we met in Brussels in 1999 Iris was earning less than £1 a day working as a company nurse and all round helper at a sea resort hotel in the province of Aklan on the North coast of the island of Panay in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines (her friends still work there), and her mum still cooks by using wood and charcoal, so the need to fight poverty is close to our hearts and is never far from our minds.
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At home with the family in Mina, Iloilo
AT LEAST 14.8 million Filipinos try to survive on less than $1 a day, accounting for 1.5 percent of the people in the world currently trapped in extreme poverty, according to latest World Bank estimates.
But some 43 million in the Philippines, based on the country’s population in 2000, live on $2 a day, the less extreme international measure of poverty.
Filipinos living on the $1-a-day international poverty line accounted for 19 percent of the Philippine population of 76.5 million as of May 2000. (The country’s population today is about 88 million).
For the complete article ‘15m Pinoys live on $1/day’ from the Philippine Daily Inquirer Tuesday, 17 April 2007 please see our fair trade friends page.
In April 2007, we went to the Philippines to visit our producers and to source new producer groups and products, and in a project that was funded by the European Union we were invited by the Advocate of Philippine Fair Trade Inc. (APFTI), our private sector host, to attend the Manila FAME (Furniture Apparel Manufacturers Exchange) International Trade Show and the Aklan Pina and Fiber Festival, where we met some of our producers and some new ones at the Fair Trade Zone.
 
Tribal weaving demonstration
Exhibitors, buyers and 
Cordaid at the FAME fair trade dinner hosted by APFTI.
The Department of Trade and Industry in Aklan, the government host for the event, also assisted us and our sincere thanks to them and APFTI for being such great hosts and for facilitating our attendance to the shows and our visits to the producers in Aklan, and making our journeys easier and smoother and saving us valuable time, not to forget the fun and enjoyment we had along the way, we truly appreciate all they did for us.
 With APFTI and DTI and
other buyers at the Aklan Pina and Fiber Festival 2007.
Demonstration - the layers of the pina leaf are split and scraped to
remove the flesh and then the single pina fibres are hand extracted.
We formed a partnership with APFTI, which was borne out of this project.APFTI is a non-government organisation seeking to end poverty through Fair Trade in the Philippines, and is a member of The International Fair Trade Association (International Federation for Alternative Trade or IFAT), and one of their roles is to facilitate a fair trade partnership between us and producer groups.
Arnel, Charise, Rommel and Reggie of APFTI
We managed to source some great products that our customers were looking for and have added some lovely jewellery collections and recycled products to our product lines and six more producers now benefit from our support.
Discover a New Way of Sharing Life
We have a deep-rooted belief in what we are doing, and our incentive is to make a greater impact by making friends with people who care about what we do, and reach other similarly motivated retail outlets, local churches and schools, with a view to converting them into being long-term buyers and friends of fair trade products.
Should you require any assistance while you are shopping please see our fair trade buying guide page in the information box on the left.
If you would like to know more about opening a Retailer Trade Account please go to the bottom of the same page.
If you would like to know more about our fair trade policy and the producer groups we work with and support, and to see how some of the products are made and the natural raw material sources they are created from please see our fair trade friends and how our products are made pages.
Together we can make an impact and a difference.
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