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When Atlanta was announced as the host site for the Games three years ago,
Jacquel Dawson, founder of Project Bush Tea, set selling Virgin Islands
bush tea at the international event as one of her many goals. "I figured
any business owner who wanted to get their product seen should try to get
there," Dawson said. She saw the Games as an opportunity to expose her
products to an international community and springboard the development of
her business both nationally and internationally.
A Virgin Islander by birth, agronomist by profession and dynamic
individual by description, Dawson cast about for a product that would help
diversify the local economy while simultaneously exemplify the territory's
international image and hit upon the cultural king, bush tea. She
perceptively recognized that this beverage's naturally-decaffeinated trait
would make it a hit with heat conscious tourists world wide. Right from
the start, Dawson has dreamed of seeing a sign at Cyril King Airport of
St. Thomas reading, 'U.S. Virgin Islands - Bush Tea Capital of
the Caribbean' and has worked energetically towards that goal.
Over the last three years, Dawson has set up a cottage industry employing
community women to process and package local bush teas into bags, gift
boxes, gift mugs and other souvenir items. She's stocked these products
in local stores on all three U.S. Virgin Islands and in her retail
outlet, the Bush, Bath & Tea Shoppe. Dawson's also talked with major
cruise line buyers and mail order companies, given Bus Tea gift baskets to
celebrities like Graham Kerr (the Galloping Gourmet) and First Lady
Hillary Clinton, held Bush Tea Socials locally and abroad and sponsored a
competition for the Project's own calypso jingle - "Support It, So Pour
Tea" - won by Tony "Majestic" Martin. She even has groundwork planted for
the construction of a Bush Teas of the Virgin Islands light industrial
theme park, set on St. Croix amidst the ruins of a 10-acre sugar
plantation. When Project Bush Tea fully matures, Dawson said cultivation
of various tea bushes will be a major bona fide agriculture industry of
the U.S. Virgin Islands, grossing 2 million in its first mature year and
giving rise to employment opportunities in the areas of cultivation,
harvesting, drying, processing, storing, packing, marketing and sales.
Dawson sent product samples and a request to be a concessionaire to the
Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) over two years ago and
received final approval this time last year. Then hurricane Marilyn
struck. "The hurricane didn't deter me, it just made me more focused and
determined," Dawson said. "With no telephone, no fax, I'd sometimes sit
in traffic for two hours to carry something across town that Atlanta
needed immediately."
This winter, Dawson traveled to Atlanta, gave Atlanta Mayor William
Campbell, a Bush Tea gift basket and held a Bush Tea Social in
coordination with a pre-Olympic fund-raiser sponsored by the Virgin
Islands Association of Atlanta. VIAA members have since rallied around
Dawson's planned concession and been resourceful in giving time, labor and
artistic skills.
This spring, Dawson pooled her local supporters - a veritable community
'Who's Who list' - and organized letter writing campaign on her behalf to
the Virgin Islands Olympic Committee to have her bush teas become "The
Official Beverage of the 1996 Centennial Virgin Islands Olympic Team."
She won the committees support and in turn agreed to donate enough gift
boxes so that the Virgin Islands Olympic Committee could give one as a
present to every nation participating in the summer Games.
One June 14, Dawson will open her 'Sun, Sand, Sea and ...Tea!!!' display
at Expo '96, the Olympic Games' large vending area located strategically
between the main transportation into downtown Atlanta and the sporting
sites themselves. During the pre-Olympics, actual Games (July 19 to
August 9) an on through Labor Day and estimated 2.5 to 3 million
spectators are expected to pass though Expo '96. In her vending space,
Dawson has recreated a Caribbean garden out of silk greenery with the help
of Toni Jackson. With the assistance of Cathy Griffin, Olympic
Coordinator for the Project, she will be serving hot and iced bush teas in
eight different flavors and her Cruzan rum-spiked bush tea toddy in
logo-imprinted splash bottles, traveler mugs and sports cups.
Cultural performances by a moko jumbi, one-man steel-pan band and
calypsonian complete the scene.
International spectators who carry Dawson's bush teas brochure home and
want to learn more about her products have only to travel the Internet.
Project Bush Tea has a space on the Virgin Islands' web pages
(http://www.bushtea.vi/). And, while potential customers are clicking
through the hypertext to find out about teas, they will be seeing all the
US. Virgin Islands has to offer. Perhaps the insightful Dawson has set
her dreams too short. Maybe what she is well on her way to achieving is
making the U.S. Virgin Islands the
'Bush Tea Capital of the World.'
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