fi-lan’thro-pe
We are a 501(c)3 non-profit charity currently working directly with indigenous, tribal coffee farmers and their communities within India, Indonesia, Laos, and Vietnam. We work to realign the value paid and received for specialty coffee on a global scale in order to alleviate poverty within indigenous, tribal farming communities.
We have spent the past 10 years creating, building, and piloting a system where nothing is bought, sold, nor commercialized. Our system is globally unique and is distinctly separate from our current systems of trade. We have fostered a network of communities where money and coffee are part of the system, but not the goals. Instead, empowerment, community development, poverty alleviation, and critical livelihood improvement are the goals. And this is how fi-lan’thro-pe (read as: philanthropy) came into existence
The system is basically this: we use the power of coffee consumption to empower indigenous ethnic minority communities with self-determined community development.
Education
So how do you get coffee? Well, support a community. Communities are desperately in need of support for basic things like clean water, removing unexploded mines from their villages, food to eat, access to education, medical assistance, and more. If you choose to support a community we work with, these communities will personally thank you with a gift of love. In this case: coffee love. We ensure that the coffee comes straight from the communities you support.
Fair & Honest Trade
As coffee experts, we know how to help communities grow, harvest, process, roast, and brew coffee. We assist the community in every way possible to that the best of their harvest finds its way to you as a personal and direct thank-you gift. All of the support you give will be used for individual family livelihood support and holistic community development. And of course, your donations are tax-deductible.
What’s Does This Mean?
Your coffee consumption is tax-deductible; making coffee drinking a cheaper habit, and these communities have access to value that is impossible to obtain under any other system.
Coffee happens to be one of the top (if not 2nd) largest traded commodities in the world, at the same time coffee is also the main source of income for roughly 70% of the small landholder families in the world who live in between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. However it also happens to be an agricultural product that has one of the largest disparities between retail value and farmer income. This meant that coffee has one of the most significant impacts on the livelihood of millions of farming community members living in poverty.
Value the community, not the coffee.Michael Gomez Wood & Cana Little - Founders of Filanthrope
We work directly with: the coffee farmers and workers as well as the communities, the consumers, and the coffee itself; the overall idea being a different way of exchanging specialty commodity goods, Gift-Exchange, such as coffee as well as eventually tea and cocoa.
Community Empowerment
How does this translate to an impact on the ground?
Imagine This…
Waking up to not only that wonderful aroma and taste of an amazing cup of specialty coffee from the other side of the world, but also enjoy a nice sigh of relief when you realize you know exactly where your money went to and towards, and a large smile across your face when you picture the community and farmers working towards building their new school perhaps, or receiving clean water, yet best of all you can take that sip and say thank-you directly to this community as they have said thank-you to you through this wonderful cup of
cà phê / kopi / ກາເຟ / कॉफ़.
