In the Dominican Republic, the Coffee Study Program students meet with the organizations that are trying to create a fair, rewarding and sustainable coffee market.

Jia Yi and her friends believe they might provide a blueprint for positive change.
Like most Italians, Jia Yi is no stranger to espresso. A 21-year-old of Chinese heritage, she fully embraces the coffee culture of the Bel Paese.
But, she says, she was only able to fully appreciate what lies behind a cup of coffee by standing among the people of the Aguacate community, in the Dominican Republic.
As she was welcomed warmly by the locals, alongside her three fellow students of the Coffee Study Program, Jia Yi realized that it is in places such as these that coffee is born.

It all begins here – with the hard work of the women and men who tend to the coffee plants; who harvest the beans and process them before they flow into the global coffee market.

As a student of international development, Jia Yi knows that this market can only be fair and sustainable if the rights of farmers such as those of Aguacate and Neiba are upheld. Organizations like the Lavazza Foundation do a lot to help empower these people who, in turn, need to organize and make their voices heard. States, too, have a key role to play, by creating shared spaces for dialogue. 

That’s why CONCAFED (Confederacion Cafetalera Dominicana) and CODOCAFE (Consejo Dominicano del Cafe) were born.

As a federation of coffee farmers, CONCAFED provided invaluable insight for Jia Yi and her friends. Here was a clear example of how uniting can help support the resilience of farmers.

“CONCAFED representatives are elected by the cooperatives,” Jia Yi explains. “They are very genuine, spontaneous. They were there to represent the interests of the farmers.”

A better world, such as the one the Sustainable Development Goals are trying to create, can appear hard to achieve. But, during her experience in the Dominican Republic, Jia Yi says that she realized that it can be done if we adopt a comprehensive approach, one that includes different perspectives – the sort of approach that community and collectives can provide.

“True power lies with the collectivity,” says Jia Yi. When farmers unite in collectives, and those collectives’ voices come together in confederations, their influence grows.

And it goes beyond them, too: “As a single entity, the Confederation is powerful,” Jia Yi tells us. “But coupled with NGOs and organizations like the Lavazza Foundation, as well as private sector stakeholders, it becomes even more powerful.”

If a sustainable world is to be achieved, the first step is to come together. Like the coffee farmers in the Dominican Republic who, Jia Yi says, taught her that:

Next week we’ll discover why, according to Rebecca, ordinary business metrics might not be what we need in measuring the progress towards a fair and sustainable world.