The 5 de junio cooperative in Nicaragua was arguably the most conspicuous success story during the three years of the CAFE Livelihoods project. The cooperative took innovative approaches to improve both the quality of its coffee and the quality of life of the communities where its members live, scoring impressive gains on both counts.
Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government in Nicaragua may get mixed reviews these days from voters on its commitment to democracy. But during the 1970s, the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua was a romantic crusade against dictatorship that united diverse elements of Nicarguan society and served as a beacon to many young people around the world. During the […]
Merling Preza is the general manager of PRODECOOP, a pioneering Fair Trade organization in Nicaragua that she helped to create in 1993, along with Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice. In that role she leads 2,300 smallholder farmers in their efforts to forge deeper trading relationships and foster the development of their communities. She is […]
A little over a year ago, in a post on industry reinvestment at origin, I raised the prospect of “harmonized investment” — complementary, non-overlapping investments in the coffeelands by diverse actors on the coffee chain. Recent events have inspired me to revisit the idea.
Social Return on Investment, or SROI, is a holistic approach to measuring return on investment that goes beyond financial returns to consider also an investment’s social, economic and environmental impacts. The farmers of the 5 de junio cooperative in Nicaragua, in partnership with the Fabretto Foundation, a local NGO dedicated to promoting food security, seem […]
I managed to get into Peregrine Espresso‘s new 14th Street location today to try some 5 de junio coffee and see how the café is communicating to its customers its commitment to reinvest in development projects in the communities of 5 de junio’s members. Both — the coffee and the communication — were swell. [slidepress […]
…the 5 de junio cooperative in Nicaragua got even more good news. Peregrine Espresso, the quality-obsessed Washington, DC, coffeehouse started by Counter Culture émigré Ryan Jensen, announced that it will donate $0.25 per cup and $1 per bag of all sales of its 5 de junio coffees — the pulp-natural espresso and single-variety maragoype microlots […]
Still more good news for our friends at 5 de junio: the cooperative’s maragogype microlot from Counter Culture Coffee earned a 91-point rating from Coffee Review. We are delighted by the cooperative’s hard-earned success and proud to support the good folks of 5 de junio through our CAFE Livelihoods project.
Good things continue to come from 5 de junio, a cooperative of determined farmers in the rugged mountains of Madriz in Nicaragua. Mostly, they are coming via Counter Culture Coffee, which is offering four different coffees from 5 de junio: a special-process single-origin espresso, a single-varietal microlot, an organic lot, and a Swiss Water decaf. […]
Based on some data we have collected in Nicaragua, it looks like direct trading relationships this harvest were worth about 50 cents a pound, and Direct Trade relationships even more.
