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Join our mission to end poverty for all people within (specialty) coffee producing landscapes

 

✒️ Sign-up below for our first pilot workshop

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       Key information
  • Objective: pilot workshop in our series, bringing together specialty actors to adopt a mission and co-design a shared business model and blueprint for action to maximize the impact of specialty coffee.  
  • Duration: 2-hours (hybrid: Utrecht @ Keen Coffee, and online)
  • Date & time: to be announced (est. December, 2025)
  • Price: free
  • Facilitator: Stefan Petrutiu, sustainability professional with 12+ years experience in implementing and evaluating multi-stakeholder programs in smallholder value chains.
  • Participants: any coffee professional or coffee lover wishing to learn about key sustainability topics and what it takes to achieve outcomes and impact in coffee growing households and communities. 
  • Preparation: be ready to embrace complexity. 

    What to expect

  • In this pilot workshop, coffee professionals are invited to learn, reflect and contribute towards the development of a longer course and a shared business model, based on Tony's Open Chain example.

  • We will begin to build the foundation for maximizing the impact of the specialty sector. The starting points are the participants' own business models (e.g. quality premiums and ad-hoc investments in farmers and their community).

  • We will explore how the Open Chain initiative is lowering costs for Mission Allies, enabling more investments at origin.

  • We will break down the economic reality of specialty coffee farmers (see figure below), as well as that of the "invisible" workers (e.g. women, children, migrants) who actually perform the farm work and who are the most vulnerable people in the coffee chain.

  • Living income gaps - Coffee Barometer - 2023We will discuss how to address persistent poverty amongst farmers by designing more holistic interventions, using a landscape approach.

  • Participants will get an introduction to key concepts needed for driving more systemic, long-term change in coffee communities and value chains (e.g. to address challenges such as small farm size, youth's ambitions & motivation, invisible workers, farmer segmentation, non-coffee businesses in sourcing landscapes, or scaling regenerative agriculture).

  • The workshop is an interactive pilot in which feedback and input will be gathered for the development of a longer format course and a shared business model based on Tony's Open Chain. 

Sign up below to stay informed and explore this page for more information.

Our ambition is to develop a universal Mission & Vision for the specialty coffee sector. We believe that this is necessary in order to:

End poverty for all people within (specialty) coffee producing landscapes

Who & what: convening public and private sector partners to jointly drive measurable, long-term, transformational changes needed in coffee producing landscapes.

How: we use education, events and a Theory of Change as a blueprint for joint action, and position local actors as gatekeepers for the needed impact. As tools, we adopt systems thinking, leverage landscape-level opportunities and develop coffee and non-coffee businesses. 

Business model: existing coffee premiums from value chain partners, redistributed towards evidence-driven interventions by strong impact partners. A fee for ensuring strong local governance over coffee landscapes (e.g. by cooperatives, large farmers, exporters and non-profits), to develop new business models for complementary crops, other products and services of entrepreneurs from within and outside the landscapes. 

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Special thanks to:

How it works

We translate a shared Mission & Vision of the specialty sector into a blueprint for action

1. Mission, Vision, Theory of Change

Using input from frontrunning specialty coffee actors, impact evaluation and thematic experts, we are developing an ambitious Mission, Vision and Theory of Change.

These evidence-based tools form a blueprint for partnership towards systemic interventions in producing countries and along value chains. 

They are spread through a series of events and a short-course, leading each stakeholder in taking immediate action. By adopting the Mission & Vision they will scale and deepen their impact, to achieve long term transformational changes.

We track outputs, outcomes and evidence on various assumptions. The main impact objectives are:

  • Developing equitable value chains where margins, risks and power are fairly distributed.
  • Changing actors' behavior, practices and norms, and upgrading their knowledge.
  • Increasing actors' satisfaction, motivation and agency (e.g. youth's satisfaction with a rural, farming lifestyle and ambitions for the future).
  • Growing the number & percentage of workers who earn living wages.
  • Growing the number & percentage of farmers who earn living incomes.
  • Increasing coffee sector's contributions towards, landscape-level, regional and national development targets. 

2. Compliance & Impact Solutions

To move quickly from adopting our Mission & Vision towards taking transformative action, we propose three foundational pillars. They are the practical tools which any individual can easily grasp and deploy:

i) Systems thinking: mapping stakeholders, resources, trends and opportunities, and identifying interactions to leverage them as a force of good within sourcing landscapes and across value chains. 

ii) Landscape approaches: mapping existing needs at various levels: individuals, households, communities or private and public entities. Developing landscape-level action plans with a wide and long-term scope, governance system, progress framework, timebound targets, defined investment and technical assistance needs, and roles & responsibilities.

This approach integrates effective and holistic interventions which target complex and interrelated issues: environmental, economic, social, governance, value & power or equity. Targets are aligned with international standards and address focus areas such as: nutrition, healthcare, sanitation, wages & incomes, inclusion, soil & biodiversity, regenerative agriculture and natural habitats. 

iii) Scaling business cases: using a scaling readiness methodology to identify business cases within landscapes, from other crops and products, nature-based solutions, off-farm MSMEs and any other services. Actors involved in each landscape's governance design risk/return timelines and identify finance pathways (VSLAs, MFIs, blended-finance) and various financiers and off-takers from within and outside the landscapes. 

3. Shared data, lower costs

Our regular events provide a joint learning and reflection space to create long-term trustworthy relationships.

We adopt systems thinking to dissect and address complex issues:

  • Persistent low incomes;
  • Fragmentation of farms leading to no profitability potential;
  • Difficulties in scaling regenerative agriculture to restore natural landscape;
  • Power and value asymmetries;
  • Youths' urban migration;
  • Detrimental gender and social norms;
  • Systemic deficiencies in the enabling environments around farming communities (e.g. poor governance, corruption, lack of resources, etc.).

Our impact programs use a landscape approach, enabling companies to:

  • Monitor evidence of progress within natural landscapes;
  • Partner cross-sector with key stakeholders with complementary functions, previously difficult to reach and align with;
  • Transition existing investments, premiums and projects towards systemic, long-term, effective interventions.

We engage technical experts and entrepreneurs, prioritizing those in coffee producing countries, to develop and scale business cases, and to draft funding and technical assistance proposals.

Beneficiaries are always the most vulnerable: farm workers and farm owners, their families and communities, as well as the people along the chain who have historically been invisible.