About us

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.

Here are some milestones on our journey of growth

From pan-roasting coffee and opening a small cafe to backyard processing and roasting to train and control quality, to empowering farmers with the technology and tools to launch their own brands.

2007

Peace Cafe is Born

Renovated a sari-sari on the corner of the home Peacebuilders Community was renting as their office. This proof of concept laid the foundations for Coffee for Peace.

2008

Coffee for Peace Incorporated

Family, friends and our community helped us raise capital to open our cafe in Davao City.

2013

Peace and Reconciliation
+ Coffee Training

We decided to integrate Peace and Reconciliation into a specialty coffee training program that taught farmers to value their identity, their community, and their land — by journeying with them up the coffee value chain.

2020

Kapeyapaan Farmers Association (KFA)

Coffee for Peace is a mission to give true value to the work farmers put into the land, but it has its limitations. KFA is our solution to enable farmers to build their own brands and have access to coffee processing, roasting, and training resources.

Peace and Reconciliation is a core part of our company.

To learn more about Peace and Reconciliation (PAR), we encourage you to visit Peacebuilders Community.

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 God:

harmony with the Creator—spiritual transformation;
harmony with our being—psycho-social transformation;
harmony with others—socio-political transformation; and,
harmony with the creation—economic-ecological transformation.

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:

By regenerative, we mean a normal process of self-reproduction, renewal, or restoration of an ecological system toward a better, higher, or more worthy state. While we start with sustainability — which is the ability to maintain ecological systems at a certain rate or level — we want to seek regenerative development as a foundational principle in this development initiative.

By inclusive development, we mean (a) enjoying a high, regenerative growth to create and expand economic opportunities; (b) experiencing broader access to opportunities to ensure that members of society can participate and benefit from growth; and, (c) having social safety nets to prevent extreme deprivation.

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.

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.

The Land of Promise:

The Story of Coffee for Peace and the Residents of Bansalan

Coffee For Peace, as a business corporation and as a community, includes

:: A Board of Directors who is made up of business executives, community leaders, creative communication professionals, and academics. They are all committed to advancing the three-pronged advocacy promise of Coffee For Peace: to help alleviate the lives of the farmers and their families; to protect and enhance the environment; and, to support the peacebuilders in the field.

:: A management team led by a business talent with 20 years of world-class financial planning experience in Canada. She is a degree holder in Food Service Administration and in Social Entrepreneurship. She is also a coffee connoisseur.

:: The wisdom, knowledge, and experience of dedicated technical staff — agriculture, information management, finance, community development — who have been excelling in their respective fields.

:: A community network of well-trained and justly-treated farmers who supplies us with their produce at fair traded prices.

see our team