This page is dedicated to in-depth profiles about the producers of Jungle Berry's fair trade ranges, from fair trade jewellery and fair trade fashion to eco-homewares to ethical gifts. Here you can find out more about how our producers live, and how fair trade benefits them.

We kick things off with a feature by Jungle Berry's Nicholas Watson about the Satere Mawe indigenous cooperative, who make our RougeNoir collection of fair trade jewellery. This is an adapted version of an article Nicholas wrote for the November 2007 newsletter for the British Association for Fair Trade Shops (BAFTS).

So if you want to learn more about where your fair trade jewellery comes from, read on...

When I tell our customers how Jungle Berry's fair trade jewellery is made by members of an indigenous tribe in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, I don't think they picture me in a city of two million people!

But it's in the teeming sprawl of Manaus - a city that's only accessible by boat or plane - that the producers of Jungle Berry's fair trade jewellery live. They're members of the Satere Mawe tribe who've moved to this Amazonian city in search of a better life.

You can see examples of some of the fair trade jewellery made by the Satere Mawe producers by clicking here.

For the Satere Mawe, adapting to life in the city is fraught with difficulties, with women especially facing marginalisation and limited horizons. Discrimination against indigenous people remains a real problem, even in Manaus. And the Satere Mawe find themselves disconnected from their ancestral forest lands, and cut adrift from their heritage.

That's why a formidable Satere Mawe lady called Zenilda set up the Amisme women's cooperative in 1993. Zenilda knew about the challenges facing Satere Mawe women from her own experience: she was sent to work in Manaus as a maid when she was just six years old. Until her death this summer she battled for the rights of her people, and tried to make Amisme self-sufficient by organising her friends and relatives to make jewellery. You can read more about Zenilda by going to the Jungle Berry blog.

We continue to work with the cooperative she set up, bringing fair trade jewellery made to our designs to the UK.

For the Satere Mawe, making fair trade jewellery for our RougeNoir collection represents a crucial source of income. It also enables them to retain links with their ancestral lands, where the seeds used in the fair trade jewellery are sourced. It also helps new generations of the Satere Mawe to continue to value the standing forest and its sustainable riches, not felled trees or cleared land.

Our work with the Satere Mawe cooperative is just a tiny piece of the Amazon jigsaw. Whatever your view of this complex area, I believe you can't hope to create a sustainable future for the rainforest without involving the people who live there.

And fair trade - and in this case we're talking about the Satere Mawe and their fair trade jewellery - has a key part to play in the future of this beautiful and threatened region.