Social projects.
Share profits.
Improving Life.
Put simply: For us, our social projects are the core of our activities, our personal source of motivation.
With each package of coffee that our customers buy, they support a child of the coffee farmers with social projects that we implement ourselves on the ground. This way, in addition to fair coffee prices, we let part of our income flow back into the community, without which our success here in Switzerland would just be impossible.
With the community
Together with the coffee farmers, the teachers and the members of the community, we started by identifying problem areas and looking for appropriate solutions.
With the community
Together with the coffee farmers, the teachers and the members of the community, we started by identifying problem areas and looking for appropriate solutions.
We always try to find answers that have been proven to be successful in scientific studies. Effectiveness should always overweight ideology in development work. And especially in Africa, there is often only a lack of “oil in the gearbox”. After all, there are schools and teachers.
Why deworming?
Deworming of school children is one of the most effective ways to promote development: worms are responsible for abdominal pain, concentration problems and malnutrition. All that doesn’t sound like “Yoo-hoo, I’m going to school today!”, does it? A study from Kenya by the Poverty Action Lab also shows that deworming treatment can reduce the absence of school pupils by a quarter. But the long-term effects are even more impressive: after ten years, the dewormed children earned on average over 20 percent more income than children who had not participated in the program. Deworming equals development.
Why Schoolmeals?
Because we want to give the children an extra push into school! Wendmage Gute, the director of the Bufeta Gibe School, had told us: “During the coffee harvest the children often do not come to school”. This is an inconvenient truth – but we do not want to ignore it. Even in certified Fairtrade cooperatives where child labour is prohibited, children help their parents with the harvest. This does not necessarily have to be a problem: In Switzerland, children of apple farmers also help their parents – but they still go to school! And to achieve this for the children of the coffee farmers, we offer them bread and honey during the harvest season. And our pilot project during the 2016 harvest was a great success. almost all kids came to school!
Why Schoolmeals?
Because we want to give the children an extra push into school! Wendmage Gute, the director of the Bufeta Gibe School, had told us: “During the coffee harvest the children often do not come to school”. This is an inconvenient truth – but we do not want to ignore it. Even in certified Fairtrade cooperatives where child labour is prohibited, children help their parents with the harvest. This does not necessarily have to be a problem: In Switzerland, children of apple farmers also help their parents – but they still go to school! And to achieve this for the children of the coffee farmers, we offer them bread and honey during the harvest season. And our pilot project during the 2016 harvest was a great success. almost all kids came to school!
And what’s with the eye glasses?
Almost 1,000 pupils and not a single child with glasses. This is not because the Ethiopians have much better eyes than Swiss children. It is because there is a lack of supply, especially in rural areas. And in Ethiopian schools, frontal teaching or chalk-and-talk is commonplace. Whoever doesn’t see the blackboard there is simply left behind. For these pupils, glasses can be a true salvation. But you have to find the children affected first – and this is not possible without a sight test. Approximately 870 pupils received an eye test on our last visit to Limmu. And all children with vision problems had glasses afterwards – although the parents had to pay part of the price themselves. After all, one thing is very important for eyeglasses: they must be handled carefully and, above all, worn! Otherwise they don’t serve much.
