Walk the Honey Road with Balyolu--A Food Project in Turkey

My guest is Catherine Jaffee, A Fulbright Scholar and a ChangeXChange leader/innovator.

In 2008, Cat moved to Turkey to study how a lack of economic opportunities in rural communities were driving women and their families to overcrowded cities. The rural steppes of Northeastern Turkey, full of over 2,000 flower species and even more bee-boxes stole her heart. She began to think of a way to work with the community to create a tourism program around honey tasting that would build opportunites for women.

In 2011, she moved to the region to live with beekeeping communities to learn about ancient honey traditions and how tourism could fund beekeeping, marketing, business and storytelling trainings as well as provide organic supplies for local women to increase their access to global markets. From this, Balyolu was born.

Balyolu was selected at Turkey's representative to be sent to London (March 2012) to compete against teams from 12 other countries in the world's largest and longest running social business plan competition.

Cat was recently selected as the US 25 and under Youth Delegation representative for the CSW-56: Commission on the Status of Women in NYC (2012).