Ernest Bader, the Quaker founder of Scott Bader, manufacturers of polyester resins at Wollaston in Northamptonshire, had a concern for assisting developing countries. As Scott Bader resins were exported round the world, he became acutely aware of the huge disparities of income and opportunity between UK and his overseas customers. After he retired as Managing Director in 1957, he traveled to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and visited St. Faith's Farm, run by Guy and Molly Clutton-Brock, where Africans and Europeans were living and working together as a community. There he met a young man, Canaan, who wanted to study in England. Later, on this same journey he visited an artist's Co-operative in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where some talented young people were using resins for coloured panels and sculpture.
On his return to Wollaston, as a structure to help such people, Ernest initiated STRIVE(Overseas), standing for Society for Training in Rural Industries and Village Enterprises.

Scott Bader
Scott Bader, a flourishing business owned and controlled by the people who worked there, contributed £15,000 and Bader convened a meeting at the offices of 'The Observer' to which came a number of distinguished people who shared his concern, Arthur Koestler, Arnold Toynbee, E.F. Schumacher author of the bestseller 'Small is Beautiful' and founder of what is now a large Third World fund, Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG). The money raised by STRIVE enabled Canaan from Rhodesia and a number of young people, particularly artists from India and Ceylon, to come to study in UK. Several of them came to Wollaston to work at Trylon Ltd, another of Ernest Bader's initiatives, which in the 1960's was a development workshop for the artistic uses of resins. They carried out some remarkable projects, including panels for the Scott Bader Commonwealth Center and a large sculpture for the Weston Favell Shopping Center in Northampton.

Schumacher & STRIVE
In the 1970's, when Schumacher was struggling to get ITDG off the ground, STRIVE made a grant of £l0,000, a large sum at that time, towards the salary of a Training Officer, Charles Tett, to work at the vestigial London office of ITDG. Another venture in the 1970's was an extraordinary project in the Welsh mountains, the STRIVE Tibetan Farm School, to which young Tibetans, who were refugees in northern India, came to learn self-sufficiency and farming skills. However, the climate of the Brecon Beacons, sheepdogs and horse-drawn ploughing, were so different from India that it was never a viable scheme and the Tibetans returned to India somewhat disillusioned. The streets of Wales were wet and windy and seldom paved with gold. Schumacher, together with ITDG and The Soil Association, were somewhat reluctantly drawn into this venture and one of the young Tibetans asked him for the hand of his daughter in marriage, so that he could stay in UK. Perhaps fortunately for all concerned, this came to nothing.

Daily Bread Co-operative
On his last outing before he died, aged 91 in February l98l, Ernest Bader visited Daily Bread Co-operative Ltd., a new employee-owned business in Northampton. He was impressed and declared that Daily Bread should be 'an even better Commonwealth than Scott Bader, so he encouraged the members of STRIVE to make a link with this Co-operative in which the working group accepted a commitment to give a significant percentage of their remuneration to causes outside the Co-operative, with special reference to Third World causes. * So Daily Bread people became members of STRIVE and the Co-operative covenanted part of its profits to STRIVE which, as a registered charity was able to reclaim tax. During the period 1980-1998, Daily Bread donated over £100,000 in this way and STRIVE allocated these donations to numerous projects in India, Africa and elsewhere.

* Preamble of Daily Bread Co-operative Ltd. March 1982.
Roger Sawtell