Investing in Our Community
2020 was a huge challenge for many, including us. However, with the support from our customers we had the opportunity to not only overcome the challenge, but grow.
For 2021, we have brought 20,000 pounds of green coffee beans. From these beans, we have budgeted $ 0.50 from each pound sold to raise $10,000, which we will reinvest into our community in Guatemala.
We are excited to partner with “Cooperativa Integral Agricola del Bosque (CONEBOSQUE), who built a community school using coffee sales alone from the last 15 years.
(CONEBOSQUE) a cooperative I’m part of, is our coffee partner in my home town, Santa Cruz Naranjo, Santa Rosa, Guatemala. The $ 10,000 is the seed of a continuous fund we will use to build and maintain a computer lab along with other projects you will find below.
Plan of Action
We will be responsible for the installation of the computer lab, but also, for providing maintenance, electricity, internet and a teacher to have this lab up and running year after year.
Our plan is simple and scalable. We hope to be a blueprint for other communities to make similar investments.
How Are We Going To Do This?
We have identified 3 steps that we believe are key for making real and impactful change in our community.
- Get people out of Survival Mode
- Build Financial Stability
- Strengthen Community
We empower people and make them part of our industry. We believe in a human-centered capitalism, where humans are the real value of our society
By the above, we hope to accomplish these 3 steps:
- Getting out of survival mode.
- Solving the never ending problem on fluctuation on prices:
- Paying more than enough to cover the cost of production and generate profits to coffee farmers
- Having a consistently fixed price without relation to changes on the stock market (contract C for coffee) to avoid volatility in commodity prices.
- Providing Bonuses for recognition of farmers and coworkers hard work
- October 2021, First direct financial bonus to partnering farmers.
- April 2021, Yearly bonus already given to our coworkers at our own coffee farm.
- Solving the never ending problem on fluctuation on prices:
- Build Financial Stability
- Access to Educational Programs that can help farmers, but also all community members with:
- Installation and operation of a computer lab to provide easy access to seminars.
- Provide classes for farmers, but also everyone in the community who is willing to learn about the correct use of the “internet.”
- Access to Educational Programs that can help farmers, but also all community members with:
- Strengthen community
- We can’t ask people to take care of others, if they can’t take care of themselves first. By accomplishing step one and two, we hope it will be easier to get people to work together to build a better society.
- Having financial stability, but knowing the challenges they have been through, will develop a better understanding of empathy, and not only sympathy.
It is important to understand that these steps are not going to be accomplished overnight, and it is a long term project that we have been working on for years, and is finally taking enough shape to share with others to grow together.