To further build upon the economic sustainability of our farming partners among Indigenous, Bangsamoro, and Settler communities, PBCI and CFP are building shared roasting facilities allowing our coffee farming partners to roast their own beans and sell directly into local markets.
Our partner, Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, started a one time capital investment project to help us build long-term economic sustainability in our Peace and Reconciliation (PAR) initiatives. This project will contribute towards:
- Probatone05 Coffee Roaster with an hourly production rate of 17kg of roasted coffee.
- A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved structure to house the coffee roaster.
- Training and employment for up to 9 Indigenous Peoples and out-of-school youth
- Direct market access for 98 Indigenous and Settler Coffee Farmers.
- Improved economic sustainability for PeaceBuilders Community through Coffee for Peace, so that the ministry of Peace and Reconciliation Communities can both continue and grow throughout the Philippines.
This particular machine will enhance the Davao-based shared roasting facility. (Our second shared roasting facility is in Valencia City, Bukidnon.)
PBCI and CFP are so grateful to our sisters and brothers in Eastern Canada who initiated this capital investment project. Thank you, our brother Ed Heide of Toronto United Mennonite Church (TUMC) who was the first to push for this project to happen. Thank you Rev. Norman Dyck who coordinated this project. Thank you very much to all who donated to this project.
We are now in the process of working on the FDA-approved facilities and hope to make it fully operational, God willing, by September 2019.
Above all, we give all the glory to our Great Creator-Provider!
We’ll always seek to express our love to the Creator by walking with the people towards peace and reconciliation.
Walking with the people towards peace and reconciliation
We are being taught by the Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines to join them as they journey towards their liberation and their self determination.
We will support their view of their future and we will help preserve and nurture their respective Ancestral Domains.
We have learned to respect the dreams of their elders and we are enriched by listening to the visions of their young people.
We will walk with them towards their dream of a sustainable livelihood that respects their culture and dignity as a people.
We are seeing a lot of Indigenous People living on mountains higher than 500 meters above sea level who have existing coffee trees.
We will share a coffee processing technology that would meet the highest local and global standards at Fair Trade prices.
We are invited to look to the future when all the Indigenous People in this land are trading fairly in local and global markets.
We will assist in developing their entrepreneurial skills by practising direct trade philosophies and inclusive business models to the coffee industry.
We are learning that financial resources and monies earned by our farming partners through a successful coffee entrepreneurship may, at times, lead to conflict if we do not prepare them with necessary skills in personal and communal financial planning.
We will journey with community leaders and their people in basic conflict resolution approaches and financial management strategies to ensure the sustainability of their newly-gained economic capacities in the context of their cultural values and customary laws.
