–
Neil Atwood
You can find Neil on Twitter, Facebook and Google +  (and of course running the store!)

For quite a while now, we have wanted to share the bounty that Ministry Grounds brings to us in a way that that was genuinely significant and would represent a long term commitment.

We have thought about trying to find a clear coffee connection in the developing world – for example, getting involved in micro finance schemes to assist coffee farmers in countries we buy from. But it proved very hard to find organisations that could provide transparent and clear connections for us to see where the support was going and to follow through with the progress of the farmers.

We also preferred supporting an organisation which was Christian-based, although we have no preference as to the religious beliefs of the end recipients.

So when I heard of friends in the last church I worked in were helping to establish a small orphanage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I knew we had found the work we wanted to support.
The DRC is one of the most troubled nations on earth.

It is the second largest country in Africa by area and is home to some 71 million people.  “The Second Congo War, beginning in 1998, devastated the country and is sometimes referred to as the “African world war” because it involved nine African nations and some twenty armed groups. Despite the signing of peace accords in 2003, fighting continues in the east of the country. There, the prevalence of rape and other sexual violence is described as the worst in the world. The war is the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II, killing 5.4 million people since 1998. The vast majority died from conditions of malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo_  )

As with so many other places in perpetual conflict, children often suffer the most. In 2012 it was estimated that there were over 5 million orphans in the DRC – virtually all of them orphans as the result of AIDS and the continual fighting in the east of the country.

Congo Aid is a small organisation formed by a handful of people living in working in or around the lower Blue Mountains in NSW. It was created to provide  support and assistance for the financial, medical and educational needs of the men, women and children of the DRC. Congo Aid Inc. members in collaboration with Muhindo Isesomo and Albert Baliesima coordinate the work on the ground in the DRC in the school, clinics, orphanage or where needed. Congo Aid Inc. works with individuals, companies, corporations, schools and aid agency to support the DR Congo.

Their goal is to first and foremost support the work of the orphanage being overseen by The Committee for Children in Distress (CCD).
Dorcas Mbambu and her husband, Archdeacon Emmanuel Kiharami run the orphanage in Butembo, North Kivu, DRC where there are 39 children in challenging conditions. Since 2011 when Congo Aid committed to being the main sponsor of the work, many improvements have occurred. Congo Aid supports the monthly basic requirements of food, clothes and medicine for the children. We will be adding to that support with a monthly donation.

In addition, we plan to run regular fund-raising promotions through Ministry Grounds to support additional projects connected with the orphanage such as:

The Farm Projects, designed to turn some of the land surrounding the orphanage buildings into food production by growing food, keeping some animals and planting trees for firewood.

The Teacher to Teacher Project, which supports the Mutiwanzuki School, associated with the orphanage.

We love the fact that we have a personal connection with some of the people driving the support work at Butembo through Congo Aid Inc. This means we know exactly where the money is going and can track the progress (and set backs) of the work there.

All of this can only happen because of the support of Ministry Grounds by its many customers, and we hope it encourages more generosity and support of work like this in places that are so desperate.

You can read many more details of their work here:  http://www.congoaid.org
And you will soon see information about the fund-raising drives on the store site.

This past week (September 23-30 2012) has seen a demonstration of the power of the media to do good.
Our local broadsheet, the Sydney Morning Herald ran an exposé of an Australian company that sells footballs – the oval shaped ones. And lots of them.
The story revealed how thousands of the cheap footys were being made in India – but not in the controlled factories that they were supposed to be made in. Rather, many of these footballs were being hand stitched by children as young as eight years old. And they were being paid the princely sum of 12c per hour for this hand-numbing work that kept them away from the schooling they so desperately need.

When the problem was revealed, the football company – Sherrin – immediately took action, and had the Indian subcontractor ensure all the footballs were made in the factory under much better conditions. And I believe they also made plans to ensure all the parents of the children used in the labour were employed at the factory.
Bravo! Good move Sherrin!
But… You wonder if more could be done. A wealthy western company could perhaps have set up an education trust to ensure good education for the children of poor Indian families, funded by a small levy on the price we pay for their footballs. After all, we wouldn’t notice 50c here or there would we?

The story got a good run here. All the major TV news programs carried it, the SMH letters page gave it good column centimetre space, and Sherrin publicly apologised and thanked the journos for drawing their attention to the problem.

What does this have to do with coffee?
Well, a lot of coffee grown around the world is sold for such a low price that many, many of the families – including the children – are kept in poverty. Many of those children are also deprived of an education as they have to work on the family farm in order to help make ends meet.
There are many reasons why they are not paid a better price for their coffee, too many to cover here. And there are some established ways to counter that problem.
Program’s like Rainforest Alliance, Utz Certified. Both program’s that go some way to support coffee growers and their families and communities.
And there is Fair Trade. Helpful in some ways, not helpful in others. Fair trade does involve a small premium on the purchase price of the green beans, but it is often hard to ascertain how much of that premium actually ends up in the growers hands.

Then there is a simpler option for many consumers.
Cut out the numerous middle stages and the frequent lack of traceability, and buy coffee that has been bought from farmers for a fair price. Coffee that you can trace back to the farm through only one or two interim steps. Coffee whose farmer you know the name of, whose farm you see photos of, whose farm you can visit if you really wanted to.
A coffee purchase that takes supply-chain responsibility seriously.
Oh, and did I mention that the coffees I’m referring to are just brilliant quality. Because they have been grown with care and a real commitment to producing outstanding coffee, because doing that is worthwhile to those farmers and the communities they are part of.
They get paid commensurate with that quality, they get to know the buyers who are just as committed to the quality of the whole process, and through those buyers they get to know some of their roasters – like me.
The coffee growing and supply business is hugely complex and involved. I’m not suggesting this is a global answer. I can’t fix the global mega-business issues, but I am interested and committed to doing whatever is in my power to treat the people in the coffee supply-chain that I am part of as fairly and justly as possible.

Of course, this is all a business. Profits need to be made, starting with the farmer and ending with the roaster/retailer. But when you start with a quality product, pay the producer a genuinely fair price, and keep the supply chain short and accountable, everyone can still make a fair profit – so long as the consumer is prepared to also pay a fair price.

And therein lies a problem.
As consumers we have been programmed to buy first and foremost on price. We put other considerations second place, a long way behind. But it’s time to change that thinking about coffee. If you genuinely appreciate and enjoy fine coffee (and I’m guessing you probably do if you are reading this blog) then you need to think very carefully about the price you are prepared to pay for your coffee – whether you buy it green and roast it yourself or you buy roasted. And you need to re-think your priorities of price v other considerations.
For several years now, we’ve promoted two broad types of coffee on the Ministry Grounds web site: ‘regular’ and ‘Special Reserve‘. Virtually all the ‘Special Reserve’ coffees come from sources that we can trace, were grown sustainably and were purchased for a fair price. We can name the farmer who grew most of those coffees, and we’ve got to know a few of them personally.
Virtually all the ‘standard’ coffee in our store has come through large commercial channels. We don’t know much about the source of the coffee, we don’t know how much the farmer was paid, and we don’t really know about their working and living conditions. The coffee is usually of good commercial standard ( ie: between commodity grade coffee and specialty coffee), but pales next to the simply far better quality of the Special Reserve specialty beans.
We would love to drop the standard coffees from our range and focus entirely on the excellent , traceable, fairly-traded coffees from sources we have real confidence in.
But we can’t, because too many of our customers buy on price first.
Our margin is exactly the same on both types of coffees – a set amount added to our purchase price, so we make no more from Special Reserve than our standard coffees.

So there is our quandary.
We want to take supply-chain responsibly as seriously as we are able.
Will you, by thinking about paying a little more for your fine coffee?

–
Neil Atwood
You can find Neil on Twitter, Facebook and Google +  (and of course running the store!)