Social Impact
We strive to become an internationally competitive company with a holistic impact on the global coffee supply chain. We want to positively impact our customers, the farmers we work with, and the communities we find ourselves in.
Our goal is to reach coffee growers on remote Indonesian islands and help them advance economically, environmentally, and socially. We hope to provide a trustworthy channel for farmers to sell their coffee at good prices and educate them in ways to sustainably grow great coffee.
Indonesia is unique in the coffee growing world in that over 95% of its coffee is grown by smallholder farmers. These households may just have a handful of trees or an entire grove on a plot of less than three hectares. Because of this unique situation up to as many as 2.33 million households in Indonesia work in the coffee industry.
We visit islands across Indonesia to find farmers who grow good quality coffee and buy from them. Engaging in a working relationship, not a one-time purchase, provides farmers with the finances they need to undertake more sustainable, environmentally beneficial ways of growing. When we enter an exchange with a community, we do more than just buy. We educate the members of coffee-growing communities who want to learn more about quality coffee, enabling them to advance their farms and their communities without our direct involvement.
We are an entity for social good like all businesses should be. But we are not a charity or an NGO. Rather than focusing on helping communities through direct action, we aspire to give farmers the tools they need to flourish. We focus on giving a hand up, not a hand out. At Bright Java, we hope to encourage farmers to develop in ways that benefit both their coffee and the farmers themselves.
We train willing members of coffee communities in the best systems of growing, tending, and harvesting. These methods set precedents for better coffee practices in entire communities, benefiting more than just the people we teach. We save profits from our coffee sales to teach farmers how to build and implement better processing equipment, enabling them to produce better quality coffee that will bring them higher prices. We assist communities in forming cooperatives, so that they can output more coffee and have greater bargaining power.
Our company realizes that when we engage in a coffee trading relationship, we are engaging with people, from smallholder farmers, to large importers, to roasters, cafes and hotels seeking direct trading relationships. Our desire to benefit others and build good relationships with both our producers and customers takes precedence over the profit we make.
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