Our Story. Our Advocacy. Our Coffee Quality.
This business is rooted in our story. Coffee for Peace, Inc. (CFP) was established on April 15, 2008 in Davao City. The idea began in 2006 when the founders helped to facilitate an informal conflict mediation, with their whole Mindanao-based peacebuilding network, between certain Migrant and Bangsamoro farming communities. The two groups were involved in an armed conflict for the ownership of several rice fields ready for harvest, regardless of who planted the rice or who really owned the land. Instead of shooting each other, the leaders of the two parties-in-conflict were invited for a dialogue over coffee. Since then, the two communities avoided killing each other. They started inviting other surrounding communities to have coffee together — for peace.
CFP started as an Income Generating Program (IGP) of the PeaceBuilders Community, Inc. (PBCI)—a Mennonite-supported peacebuilding movement in the Philippines that exists (a) to train and multiply effective Peace and Reconciliation (PAR) Team Leaders; (b) to support the leaders in organizing and nurturing their respective PAR Teams; (c) to establish contextually-relevant PAR Communities; and, (d) to develop a Network of PAR Communities.
We are justice-based peace and reconciliation (PAR) advocates.
Peace and reconciliation (PAR) is based on regenerative-inclusive development.
We understand peace as enjoying harmony in our basic human relationships through the transforming power of the Creator:
We understand reconciliation as building relationships between antagonists. The primary goal is to seek innovative ways to create a time and a place to address, to integrate, and to embrace the painful past and the necessary shared future as a means of dealing with the present.
When PBCI makes a covenant with our community partners, we see and understand regenerative-inclusive development as follows:
We sustain PAR through the multiplication of social entrepreneurs.
We propagate PAR by training young social entrepreneurs. And we expect them to apply PAR principles in the practical world of business.
Our interns combine commerce and social issues in a way that improves the lives of people connected to our ministry of reconciliation. We measure the social entrepreneurs’ success not in terms of profit alone. Our social entrepreneurial interns measure success in terms of people, peace, progress, partnership, and planet.
We produce quality coffee as our iconic product for justice-based peace and reconciliation.
The social enterprise, to us, are businesses that make money and work toward improving the peace and reconciliation journey of our land. By selling quality goods and services to consumers, which we determine through market research, we seek to help solve conflicts in our land in a sustainable way.
The people who are often attracted to social entrepreneurial principles and practices are those who dream, and are willing to work hard and smart, towards solving a social problem. In turn, social entrepreneurs attract consumers who want to help social problems every time they spend money on something they need or want.
What Others Are Saying About Us
United Nations
“Coffee farming is helping indigenous people in the Philippines to protect the environment, preserve their ancestral lands and secure their financial future. They are doing so through an organization called Coffee for Peace, one of the winners of a UN-backed award that celebrates innovation. “
READ MOREReuters
“Beyond helping coffee growers get a better deal, CfP aims to encourage dialogue between communities, with tensions ranging from colonial-era conflict between native Muslims and Christian settlers to land and resource disputes between ethnic groups.”
READ MORESt. John’s University, New York
“Coffee for Peace is creating a system for the indigenous people of the Philippines to give them a way to succeed and to help them achieve things that they would not be able to do without the training that they receive from the company. They help people solve their own personal disputes with others while also helping them to earn a livelihood in order to provide for their families. They help connect people and give them hope.”
READ MOREPriceWaterhouse Cooper
“It is not difficult to understand that even rebels can get attracted to the idea of coffee farming. Their habitat is the mountains, they need decent livelihood, and they need a fair trader to buy their produce. It counts less what their political affiliations are because in time, all that will count is their contribution to the economy and the society, and how their enterprise becomes pivotal to laying down their arms and joining the fold. It is with this noble objective of not thinking what her enterprise can give her financially that Coffee for Peace won the Bid Challenge in 2011 and became a finalist in the Developmental Social Enterprise Awards of PwC Philippines and the Benita & Catalino Yap Foundation.”
READ MOREPhilStar – StarWeek Magazine
“MANILA, Philippines – From a political activist to being a peace activist, Joji Pantoja knows what transformation can do to a person. Whether a farmer or an advocate, the change starts from within…”
READ MOREGo Negosyo
“Felicitas Pantoja, on the other hand, encourages peace through the use of coffee. Through Coffee for Peace, she helps improve the lives of coffee farmers through their coffee-growing model.”
Mennonite World Conference
“Coffee for Peace has a simple and yet elegant coffee shop in Davao City. A visitor to this coffee shop can see the advocacy for promoting coffee produced by the locals. But upon a closer examination, one will realize that this is not just promotion of the local coffee, but that it advocates peace and justice through fair trade.”
Mindanao Daily Mirror
“Not one but six farmers growing coffee have already built new houses in Purok Pluto, which is five hours to Mt. Apo’s summit in Cotabato and Davao del Sur provinces, the highest mountain in the Philippines. These families are among the 13 communities trained by Coffee for Peace on coffee plantation management and peace and reconciliation that addresses the values of communities. The sight of the new houses upon her visit in the area last week delighted Felicitas “Joji” Pantoja, CEO and Capacity Building Trainer for Farmers of Coffee for Peace, which is a social enterprise that promotes the culture of peace through coffee.”
(Mindanao Daily Mirror has closed – no link available)
Philippine Board of Investments
“Coffee for Peace (CFP) teaches coffee processing and plantation management to indigenous communities torn by armed conflicts, illegal logging, and irresponsible mining. The company also links the coffee farmers to local and international markets. Before CFP’s intervention, the coffee farmers only made between P30-P50 per kilo of coffee. These coffee growers now supply high quality beans to Canada, the United States, and Switzerland. To date, CFP has trained over 600 farmers who can sell their coffee beans for as much as P250 per kilo. These farmers have also raised their monthly incomes to at least P9,000 per month.”
Marketplace Magazine
“Business skills come in handy for emerging Philippine coffee industry. Coffee growers in the Philippines can be grateful that Joji Pantoja knows business. Otherwise they might still be brandishing guns rather than toting sacks of Arabica beans. For Joji and her husband Dann, who are Mennonite missionaries, the coffee trade they’ve developed among highland tribes has become an important cog in a larger peacebuilding ministry in their native country. “
Southeast Asia Globe
“Filipino social enterprise Coffee for Peace is mediating disputes in the Philippines’ most conflicted region by harnessing the power of coffee as a communication tool.”
Asian Development Bank
“Years of conflict and Illegal logging have left swathes of land in the Philippine island of Mindanao in a poor state, but community involvement and modern farming practices introduced by companies like Coffee for Peace are now bringing change.”