Our Ethos
Coffee is a tool. This tool is powerful: One that has the opportunity to connect billions of humans being every day.
A large majority of the coffee we consume is produced by small family farmers belonging to numerous indigenous, ethnic minority communities, most of whom rely on coffee as a solution to poverty, yet remain under the threat of severe socio-economic & ecological hardships.
Coffee is a tool. This tool is powerful: One that has the opportunity to connect billions of humans being every day.
A large majority of the coffee we consume is produced by small family farmers belonging to numerous indigenous, ethnic minority communities, most of whom rely on coffee as a solution to poverty, yet remain under the threat of severe socio-economic & ecological hardships.
Our method is to use our collective love of coffee in a way that provides sustainable socioeconomic development for these indigenous tribes. This is in direct contrast with the current farmer – middleman – consumer relationship in which the farmers are merely treated as a means to satisfy the coffee demand, while receiving the bare minimum compensation.
By cutting out the middleman, and relying on gift exchange principles between the farmer and the consumer, we strive to create community development programs which enable these ethnic communities to determine their own future. These programs aim to raise the living standards for these tribes which produce some of the highest quality coffee in the world.
Guiding Principles
- United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Community-Driven Development and Asset-Based Community Development
- Asset-Based Community Development
The U.N.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a basic guiding document of all our approaches with each and every community we work with.
This guiding document is critical for our approach towards development as we recognize the right of each community to choose the path they deem as most appropriate for their people.
We are obliged and honored to be observers, and if allowed, commentators and participants in the discussions and eventual development initiatives which are selected by each community.
Community Projects
Over the years, the communities have identified needs from providing smoke-free cooking stoves, to clean drinking water, to healthy seedlings for their farms. The development initiatives put forth by the communities are as diverse as the communities themselves. Over the course of time, the nature of projects will always change in order to address needs as they are discovered. This is the beauty of supporting communities – Enabling them to be able to develop on their own terms.
