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Please don’t brag about being vegan and trying to change the world but contribute to modern slavery by drinking unfair coffee every day.
Who am I you ask? Let me introduce myself:
Hi all! My name is Marly, and since the beginning of January an intern at Moyee Coffee. Ever since I was little, I have had great affinity with coffee. I can vividly remember the smells from the freshly made batch of filter coffee being made at home. Being typically Dutch, I have always enjoyed a good moment of ‘koffie-leuten’ or ‘een bakkie doen’, which basically means taking a break for an hour from work to spend drinking coffee. Once I started to work with coffee as a barista, I came to realize how unfair and broken the coffee chain actually is.
What really struck me was that, although being willing to pay 3 euros for a double shot espresso, nobody really ever wondered where their coffee came from. Please don’t brag about being vegan and trying to change the world but contribute to modern slavery by drinking unfair coffee every day.
The road to Moyee
The study which I am currently pursuing requires that we do an internship. From the get-go, I already knew I wanted my internship to relate to coffee. More importantly, a coffee corporation whose main focus is related to sustainability and inclusive development. Although the Netherlands has a variety of corporations to choose from, Moyee is the only one with a radically different approach.
You prepared and strapped in? Let’s take off to my little internship island! Moyee is starting a new project in Ethiopia. What are they going to do here I hear you ask? In the Guraferda district, which is about 572 km south-west of the capital Addis Ababa, near the town of Mizan Teferi, Moyee is constructing a new coffee plantation. We’re aspiring that at this plantation several smallholder farmers will be able to live peacefully, receive education, and most importantly, grow coffee.
In this project, I research what the best socio-cultural approaches are for Moyee for targeting the people and farmers in this region. Moreover, my research focusses on how the project can improve youth participation and gender equality. On top of that, but nonetheless very important, I am involved with how this project can eliminate the occurrence of child labour.
Now, all this might sound as gibberish to you, which I can understand. The goal of my research is to produce a theoretical approach to improve the above mentioned things. If COVID-19 wasn’t real, starting to wish it wasn’t, I would have been able to do on the ground research and produce targeted results and approaches for Moyee. Sadly, this isn’t the case, and we will just have to work with what we’ve got.
What is next?
I am still fully committed to pursuing my research. I am also actively with talks between NGO’s and Moyee to discuss the best approaches to eliminate child labour. Hopefully I have convinced you that we do a lot more work behind the scenes to improve your coffee drinking experience to the most ethical one yet. In my next blog I will, hopefully whilst we both drink our cup of Moyee coffee (my favourite is the Kenya Triple!), discuss more in depth how I go about my research and what type of output I produce. Take your sled to the Albert Heijn and buy yourself a bag of Kenya Triple or Moyee coffee of your preference! While you’re at it, plant a tree using the QR code in the bag 😉
Stay safe Moyeestas!
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