CFP and SEG representatives meet at a local hotel restaurant near PeaceBuilders Community Centre. Friday, 12 January 2018, Davao City.
Our friend, Prof. Jonathan Rudy, Senior Fellow at the Pennsylvania-based Social Enterprise Group, led a team to visit Mindanao for the purpose of exploring partnership with Coffee For Peace. With him were Deborah Drury, Jason Biesel, and Rachel Craft.
Last 07-12 January 2018, they travelled from Pennsylvania to Davao. They visited our farming partners in Mount Apo area and in Mount Matutum area. They also interacted with our social enterprise partners in Valencia, Bukidnon.
Sihaya Ansibod, Toto Balono, Deborah Drury, Jon Rudy, Jason Biesel, Joji Pantoja, and Rachel Craft: CFP and SEG exploring social enterprise partnership
State of CFP. Through field visits, formal presentations, and informal conversations, we have presented to them the current state, movement, and direction of Coffee For Peace Corporation:
:: We are implementing positive actions to improve the quality and consistency of the coffee supply; this is our current focus that would sustain the long-term development of both the producers and CFP.
:: We are streamlining and codifying the organizational structure and the operational system of CFP as a for-profit corporation.
:: We are transitioning from our current level of small-sized business to becoming a medium-sized business by 2020.
Possible Points of Convergence. We also felt that these new friends from the Social Enterprise Institute at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania listened to us and heard what we desire as the points of convergence in this budding partnership:
:: To provide research support to CFP. The ideal researcher would be from Elizabethtown College who is able to look at Mindanao’s socio-economic realities and communicate such realities to various audiences in Pennsylvania. The research output should contribute to a clearer social enterprise investment partnership.
:: To proceed with a partnership concept that is best described as Enterprise for Peace Collaborative (E4PC). In this model, coffee would be the initial, major vehicle for peace education and connection. As Prof. Jonathan Rudy articulated well, “the E4PC model might be able to better support the various industries that are in the CFP sphere such as brick making, glamping (glamor camping), carbon offsets, and tribal crafts to name a few.”
We, at CFP, are anticipating with much excitement and energy where this conversations and relationship would lead us.
