 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Emily Polak and I'm a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, IID, and we're hosting this afternoon's webinar. I'd really like to welcome everyone to this fifth webinar in the series that we're running at the moment on approaches to empowering producers in commercial agriculture. It's fantastic, so many people could join us today. A lot of people have registered, there's interest in this and it's a critical issue. So this webinar series on empowering producers in commercial agriculture is supported by a four-year project led by IID but in collaboration with partners in Nepal and Malawi and it's funded by UK aid in connection with commercial agriculture for small holders and agribusiness program or CASA. So you can find out more on either of those by contacting us and through the links on the channels you reached this webinar by. A key part of this endeavor, this webinar series and of the project as a whole, is gathering evidence from around the world and testing approaches on how producers are exercising agency to address challenges in their value chain relations. So it's starting from the producer and for example approaches to address information and power, asymmetries and approaches that support producers to be in the driving seats or at least to be engaging and interacting with public and private sector actors from a position of strength or a stronger position than they might otherwise have been in and it's about producers and their wider communities looking also at household level and social differentiation. We're very pleased today to be hosting a group of panelists who are going to share their experiences of a Kenyan based social enterprise that has been for the past decade seeking to disrupt business as usual in the coffee sector. Vava Coffee began operations in 2009 and now has a rich experience of seeking to tackle barriers to an inclusive, fair and sustainable coffee sector. Vava Coffee is of course now facing unprecedented conundrums from COVID-19 like the rest of us and like many other enterprises, businesses, investors and we're interested to know what that is meaning, what that is telling us about their relationship with producers and how producers can continue to have a voice and overcome the challenges we're facing. So this webinar will tread a path between what lessons have been generated by the work of Vava Coffee with a sharp focus on women and youth over the past decade and then also on the other hand the options and strategies for sustaining this work to strengthen producer agency in their value chain in the pandemic context and beyond. IID is not directly involved in this initiative. This series is a learning event to generate lessons from different cases and contexts so we bring you this in the spirit of mutual exchange and learning and we very much invite you to share your insights and experiences and pose questions relevant to this discussion following the panel. So without further ado I'd now like to introduce our panel who will take you through the key components of the work that they do, the progress and then challenges currently being faced and maybe some lessons for others both kind of out of the COVID context but also what's happening now and how we might move through it as an international community. So first Vava and Gwenni will give us an overview presentation and Vava is the creator of Vava Coffee which is a social enterprise that trades, roasts and consults on coffee value chains. Its main aim is to contribute to better future prospects for coffee communities and the industry as a whole. So that will be our key presentation to understand more from Vava Coffee and their experiences and following that overview we'll hear from two panelists connected to the initiative to hear reflections from their perspective. Brian Morare is a young Kenyan farmer age 23 and current farm manager intern at Vava Coffee. Brian is currently heading the Kisarjukipeto organic food project. So Brian's going to reflect on his understanding of some of the social inclusion dynamics in the coffee sector and also what he hopes to gain from engaging in the youth entrepreneurship mentoring scheme that is offered by Vava Coffee but currently on hold as I understand it due to the pandemic. Holly Kragiopoulos is owner and director of Northstar Coffee Roasters, a coffee roastery academy and coffee shop based in Leeds in the UK and a buyer of Vava Coffee. It's a business focused on quality and ethics showcasing some of the greatest specialty coffee grades from around the world and investing in communities across the coffee lands. Holly founded Northstar in 2013 and is responsible for managing producer relationships so Holly's going to share some reflections about her relationship with Vava Coffee and particularly now how they're seeking to be flexible and adaptable in the context of in this case the UK government's lockdown measures to sustain the relationship to suppliers and to the producers behind them. So unfortunately under the current circumstances we're not able to have a coffee producer with us on the panel due to movement restrictions and internet challenges but we're delighted to have these speakers join us and we look forward to hearing their perspectives. So without further ado I'd like to hand over to our presenter today Vava and Guenny to take us through the Vava Coffee experience and I look forward to sharing this with you and the discussion that follows. Thank you. Thank you Emily. Hi everyone and thank you IED for hosting this webinar today. So I'll move swiftly I'll say through the presentation to allow I'll say sufficient time maybe for Q&A and for my other panelists to also share their stories but I'll just quickly touch on why we do what we do and as Emily briefly mentioned we are a B Corp which is basically a benefit corporation with a social enterprise model and have been in this sector for for 10 years now and I also I mean today I'll also touch on a bit of the work that I also do with my other organization Hentadel Futuro which has done quite a bit of work on women and youth within the region and in Latin America and hence taking some of those learnings and fusing them into current scenarios that we're faced with. So having started on this journey 10 years ago it's definitely not been an easy ride but I can say that the failures and the lessons learned have been better than any MBA class that I've been a part of so I wouldn't despite all the challenges that we're faced with I really would not choose another career so I'm grateful for all the experiences. Now within the coffee sector we've got different various players and everyone's been affected in different ways. Today I'll touch more on the folks that we work with very closely which are the producing communities but also what our business has been faced with be it in logistics issues and being a trader as well how the current scenario has also impacted our business. When we look at the producers I would say this would be the most vulnerable sector of folks within the supply chain because some of us do have like a fallback plan or better ways of shielding ourselves during this pandemic however say for producers especially because some producers are having their harvests happening currently we see an increase in cost of production and extra costs which have to be incurred if they have to provide PPE to laborers and existing employees as well as perhaps further investments in more drying beds and some may also not be able to offset some of the loans they they have outstanding with some financial institutions. When it comes to our millers and marketers they may have certain delays from certain clients and certain operational disruptions based on the curfew that we see and movement restrictions currently in place in Kenya. As for traders which is where we fall into play is well there's given the some knee jerk reactions that we've had from various BIT clients we could see a reduction in order volumes. In this time it's also definitely tougher to sign on new clients because everyone in the world is affected by this situation so any sort of expansion plans we had in terms of maybe increasing volumes are I mean those are tough to come by in this times and also from various discussions we've been having with other industry players be they coffee shop owners or roasters we've seen people lose massive volumes in in business and we also see consumers unable to experience that third place experience where they want to visit their favorite coffee shop and get a great coffee from a barista. Later on in this presentation I'll touch a little on how or what we're doing as a business to um still have a positive impact on the community as well as um a couple of tips that we may share with others on this webinar. I want to lay the landscape a little on various coffee growing regions in Kenya primarily these have been the central and rift valley regions and the central regions cover mostly the Mount Kenya region and the eastern region the eastern region being Ambu, Meru and the Mount Kenya region being Tika, Nyeri, Kiambu and other parts and then you've got rift valley which covers Nandi, Kericho and you've got the western parts of Kenya that also grow coffee. Now based on statistics that I came across from um the Federation of Women Lawyers when we look at land ownership um in Kenya we see that 94 percent of land is owned by men five percent is owned jointly and only one percent of land is actually owned by women and then we also look at um how many households are actually uh headed by women 32 percent and 68 percent of households are headed by men but I think we all know who actually heads those households um regardless of that so another sort of data point that has influenced our work is what when we look at age distribution in Kenya majority of the population is under 35 years and unemployment rates from past statistics have shown the unemployment rate in Kenya to be at 40 percent but obviously with COVID affecting all economies we should see this percentage rise over time. Now looking at all this different data points um we decided as a business to um create what we call a social value chain. Now a social value chain is an analytic framework which combines a theory of change and look and also fusing a value chain analysis which helps companies to strategically assess their social objectives we created a social value chain which then informs our activities as a company but also helps us keep on track in actually looking at whether we're actually having an impact on farming communities in this country. Now our focus has been primarily on women and youth now some people may ask why women and youth well agriculture being an important engine of any economy in particular in Africa we've seen that there's a lot of barriers to entry when it comes to women and also youth when it comes to land ownership as well as capital access to capital and also just access to proper training to enable women and youth actually take up opportunities that present themselves in this be it in coffee or in agriculture in general. Now during um this pandemic that we're faced with we're asking ourselves how do we sustain the agency of women and youth in these times where both as business leaders and business leaders and people within the sector we're faced with massive challenges and literally just trying to keep our heads above water. We realize that we're faced with a system failure in our economies whereby we have 42 percent of Kenyans still living under the poverty line and 36 percent of Kenyans connected to electricity whereas in neighboring Uganda and Tanzania we've got the statistics you see on your screen and when we talk about environmental issues we see that deforestation numbers are still pretty high now despite what we're faced with the world is still demanding better of all businesses now in the past 20 years we've seen companies try to sort of measure how they do good using certain certifications but as the world demands better we've had to look for new ways to sort of measure what we do and how we do it hence what I present as a better alternative for us even during this time is tools which have been provided by the bee community. Now what is a bee corporation? Certified bee corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose and it looks at a business in the areas that you see on your screen from governance to workers to community and environment. What you see on your screen currently is the Vava Coffee score but of course we've got our weak points where we still need a lot of work however this is a tool, the impact assessment tools that are provided under BeeCorp are what we are currently utilizing to help us still monitor the work and how we engage with our community bee producers and various other suppliers and the youth and women communities that we're trying to impact. I'll skip over the next couple of slides fairly quickly but some of the other benefits that we see being engaged in the bee community are a group of like-minded be it CEOs or like-minded individuals who are still striving to do good despite and in spite of the challenges that we're faced with as a community. Now faced with the various challenges that we see today I'd like to talk about how we can turn the challenges into opportunities and I think the role of leaders in this times is to ask ourselves how can we innovate and how can we still motivate be it our employees and the community in which we engage and diversification is something that we've always trained and talked to our producers about and in this times part of what we've done as an organization is also delve into projects around food security and how we can engage the youth in the community in learning better ways of farming but also keeping them busy during these times hence you know delving into other I would say revenue streams for the organization hence the quesadro quipeto organic food project that Brian is currently heading. The other is how do we continue engaging in sustainable coffee projects with the women who have previously been beneficiaries of our work and the funny thing about sustainability is that it has to be sustained so we've had to sort of find smart ways of keeping things going and finding other ways of engaging coffee producers be it ways of having them increase in animal husbandry and finding ways of having them produce biogas but also looking at how we can perhaps build on value addition locally and in as much as Kenya is not a coffee consuming country is just to drive that agenda in how do we entice local consumers into finally appreciating the coffee that's produced here and sort of tying that into also food and having that as an offering as a company whereby if folks are ordering our coffee locally they can also get a food basket. So these are some of the innovative ways that we see we can still keep engaging positively in the community and increasing both local consumption of coffee but also other ways that we've seen within our supply chain is how do we leverage on the partnerships we have be it with folks like Holly at North Star how do we share the stories of how we're being impacted in this COVID times and how do we share lessons amongst ourselves so that at least after this pandemic that our businesses are both there and we're all supporting each other through openly sharing what the challenges are but also openly trying to find solutions because I honestly believe that despite all the negatives that have come with COVID there's certainly opportunities that we can leverage as folks within the supply chain in coming up with smart collaborations that could boost all of us. Now the other I would say bigger player in a thing we can leverage here is technology and social media these are proven to be very powerful tools in how we can remotely connect with not just producing communities but folks around the world in storytelling and you know telling what's happening within the community and seeing how these stories can help impact or bring about positive solutions and also ensuring that through all of this the vulnerable constituents of the community especially women and youth are also protected because what we've seen also as a negative side effect to all of this is the levels of insecurity that have cropped up be it I mean in Kenya we've had cases of police brutality but also cases of women not feeling very safe trying to beat the curfew and getting home there've been those incidents of sexual abuse so how do we all come together to ensure that we all come out of this on the other side in one piece so with that I think of sort of come to my time and thank you and I'd like to hand it over to the next panelist thanks thank you so much Vava and I should mention my name is Thierry Berger and I'm an associate at IID and I will be moderating this event I will now ask Holly if she would mind sharing her remarks in relation to Vava's presentation just five minutes and then we'll give the floor to Brian so Holly over to you okay thanks Thierry yeah so as my introduction kind of mentioned I'm one of the directors and owners of a company called North Star Coffee Roasters we're based in the UK and we're relatively small small business we have a huge focus on very high quality coffee and service both wholesale clients from coffee shops restaurants bars cafes and to also an online community of home coffee enthusiasts and I guess in this five minutes that I have it's sort of I'd quite like to comment firstly on how we have been impacted by COVID and therefore how our producing partners have been will be impacted and a little bit about why we kind of choose to work with Vava and the work that she's doing why we align ourselves so closely with those values when it comes to our sourcing for Kenya and Tanzania which is kind of the two origins that we currently work with Vava for so very briefly like many businesses in our industry with the kind of situation just spiraling out of control with COVID we found ourselves almost overnight having lost the majority of our kind of business which was to supply wholesale customers in the hospitality industry which really it did feel overnight kind of just closed its doors and hopefully temporarily but we're kind of now starting to feel some repercussions that that may be a bit more longer term and for us that was a really terrifying situation and after kind of trying to build a business for the past seven years we really really identify with what Vava says about how challenging that is and although the challenges we face may have been different you know it's certainly not been a kind of an easy route to getting there to try and convince people that they need to pay more for their coffee that coffee you know can be can be much more than just you know instant granules dissolved in hot water and so yeah really terrifying situation for us when when the kind of impact of COVID really started to make itself known and as Vava sort of stated in her presentation obviously we are fortunate to be at the kind of consumer end of the supply chain and therefore definitely more resilient you know to kind of facing issues like this and hopefully coming through the other side we we sort of took some time out and managed to to try and well really pivot the focus of our business focused on online sales which we you know we already had a platform set up to do that and it just became you know more important than ever that that was performing effectively and that meant you know that we could crucially sort of continue roasting beans and and making our way through through lots of forward contracted coffee stocks which was ultimately our probably one of our biggest concerns really when all of this started to hit was the question of how we would you know be able to buy from the producers that we work with you know this year and and therefore make impact you know through our purchase as a small business that's the only tool that we have really is to to try and drive value back to the to the producer and and kind of increase the impact that we're actually able to have and so thankfully we are at a point of sort of maintenance I would say at the moment with the business that we we have through the online shop and we're utilizing this time to really try and communicate issues like the the like Babas discussed really you know through our own social media channels through reaching our customers who you know arguably are facing issues of the of their own right now but you know it seems to be in times of crisis like this we've seen in the past you know in times of economic decline that the kind of rise of conscious consumerism has really is something that hopefully we can take hope from that you know despite the the kind of challenge around you know facing economy locally and and internationally hopefully what will come out this will be a greater appreciation for for kind of behaving in a more responsible way as a consumer and briefly just to touch on why we kind of work so closely with Vava and why we share her mission to sort of raise the profile of women and youth in the supply chain and coffee and I've stated obviously as a small business we're we're somewhat limited in the kind of financial impact that we can have through our purchasing and we're not we're not kind of by any means a big buyer of coffee in comparison to some of the world's biggest coffee companies but we very very much believe that our our you know every every sort of dollar we spend on coffee we wanted to have maximum impact and maximum benefit for those who are responsible for growing it and therefore kind of sustaining our entire industry and what's become known within the coffee industry over the past few years is that the average age of coffee farmers is is gradually increasing to around 55 years old and and you know that does present us with a kind of a bit of a question mark over the future of our industry and with a slightly aging population of producers and you know and more more use kind of being motivated to move out of rural areas into urban areas like leaving coffee behind the question has to be asked why is that happening and what kind of becomes clear to us is the industry as it is right now is very very volatile and the the kind of pricing mechanisms that the coffee is is bought and sold under it you know drastically need updating and climate change issues that producers are facing and is leaving them much more open to volatility environmentally and and ultimately that's leading to a situation where coffee farming is not really attractive you know to sort of stay with them the other kind of principle around all of this is obviously the the theory of agency and producers having agency and essentially control over their their business and so the question is how do we kind of ensure producers are looking at what they do as a business and then showing that they feel engaged and empowered in what they do to put them in a stronger position and take a bit more control over their own supply chain and so that's just touching on the youth aspect women obviously the partnership gender equity sort of has found that 90 of every dollar earned by a woman will be spent back on the household and on the family where only as in comparison to 40 percent in comparison to dollars earned by males and therefore you know it's in this manner that we feel coffee can be a huge opportunity for community development economically and that's kind of where we see the potential in what we do if we can ensure women are able to access more more money from their supply chain but they are all too often solely kind of responsible for in terms of harvesting you know mulching pruning picking everything and they're currently denied huge access from the market and that's something that we feel and if we could try and change and turn around you know that ultimately the impact economically could be huge and so that that's kind of why we've aligned ourselves closely with the work that Bob was doing because of that focus on on kind of empowering women and youth and we lend our kind of time in terms of running sensory workshops when we when we kind of visit which we intend to do hopefully again next year and just spreading the word you know trying to do as much as we possibly can to ensure that our own our own customers understand the the initiative of Hentad El Pitura that we can contribute to financially as well through sales of our Kenyan in Tanzanian coffee and so in terms of how how this relationship will be impacted by Covid obviously we really hope it won't be and last year you know in terms of our sales of our purchase of Kenyan coffee we purchased from the fly crop and therefore landed coffee in around August as opposed to slightly earlier in the year so we kind of wouldn't usually be looking to put to make another purchase from new crop until around about nine to twelve months after that that time that gives us a bit of leeway to hopefully ensure that our purchases and our volumes won't be too affected by by Covid and and we we kind of really look forward to talking about that with Baba very soon and and yeah but in between now and then we're just going to be doing all that we possibly can kind of share the word and share these stories really to ensure consumers are as informed as they possibly can be. Thank you very much Holly. Brian would you like to share your comments please? Okay here what I'm saying is the government said the other day we lost 1.2 million jobs here in Kenya as a result of Covid-19 so youths are affected here and we are trying to say that all is not lost this is an opportunity for the youth also to venture more into agriculture we have a lot of land to farm and not just farming we have a lot of land to farm on the good food that is organic food which we must advocate for for each and every farmer here in Kenya to produce good food that can be eaten around. Now on the community side around we are trying to impact the community around the youth also in training them on on organic organic food production which will impact them positively okay and they'll know how to produce these things because as I have said someone have to travel as much as eight kilometers from where we are to go to a market to get some spinach and kale and some maize these are staple food here in Kenya so the idea is to try not only the coffee farmers we try and sensitize that this thing can be done it's not it's not from the it's not from the blues and it can be done and we can show them how to do it so as to impact them positively. Over to you Teri. Thank you Brian and apologies for the participant for the quality of the connection thank you to our panelists I think Emily wanted to share very very brief remarks Emily over to you. Okay thanks Teri and thanks once again to all the presenters it was a very rich conversation. It would be very hard to wrap up everything in this one minute or 30 seconds as I said we will be doing a blog to summarize the discussion and there's opportunities to continue through comments there that will be shared with you and I think we're in very interesting times and the I think what the current context is is doing is is forcing people to ask and not only how can we continue to do what we do but what are the opportunities and so Brian touched on opportunities for youth in the context of mass unemployment and then there's opportunities to to rethink value chains and global supply chains and in many cases people are looking to the indicators of resilience between global supply chains and more local supply chains and looking at what creates that resilience and food security in times of crisis and so there's lots more to be discussed about how how resilient value chains are even when they are at the end of the spectrum that is looking to generate the most impact at the community and producer level as the the project that we're working on and empowering producers and looking at agency we're interested to see where metrics around or perhaps not metrics of qualitative information around how agency and empowerment is is also featuring there how our producers themselves seeing their role in their agriculture and who they sell to and how they sell looking at how they negotiate and that type of question so this is rich data and exchange for for those questions so I won't take I won't make further comments in that regard we can continue the discussion we hope you'll all stay engaged with the project and there'll be opportunities obviously to follow up with with Vava and North Star through their own contacts this is a very micro case in the whole of the coffee sector or the whole across agriculture and small scale producers so we hope you've enjoyed a kind of zoom in to a particular case as well as through the medium of zoom and we look forward to continuing the discussion