VALENTINE'S GIFT OF LOVE PACKAGE
The New York Times has called our coffee, "The Cabernet of Coffees."
For every order we receive, three dollars will be electronically transferred to Bugando Hospital in Tanzania for life-saving health care programs.
Sweet Unity Farms Coffee is a cooperative of over 400 small-scale coffee farmers founded by David Robinson, son of baseball great Jackie Robinson. David has made his home in Tanzania for the past two decades; he leads a social mission of growing coffee from seed to cup. The cooperative is located in the southern highlands of Tanzania, East Africa, in the region called Mbeya.
As coffee is Tanzania's largest foreign exchange earner, Sweet Unity Farms Coffee is an effort to change a bleak reality and create a voice, window, and means of joining the world community. David, a rural farmer himself, provides the farmers as much as 25% more than "fair trade" value for their crops.
Sweet Unity Farms gourmet coffee is grown exclusively by small-scale, family owned farms. These individuals then form farmer managed cooperatives. The groups come together to bring Sweet Unity Farms to the market, and to you.
The beauty of East Africa is legendary. So is its poverty.
Tanzanian coffee farmers are often forced to sell their harvest
to large corporate buyers. This series of transactions takes
virtually all of the earnings away from the farmers.
Why It Works
In leveraging their unity, the coffee farmers can seek direct
trade buyers from large American and European markets. The
result is a Sweet Unity Farms that can invest in itself and its
community.
By building direct trade agreements with distributors, Sweet
Unity Farms eliminates the mid-level buyers and sellers. The
results are widespread:
• Help to needy communities
• Development in impoverished areas
• Equitable pay for coffee farmers and pickers
• Direct inspection of coffee quality standards
• Better control of environmental standards
• Education for future generations
• Leadership out of poverty and into dignity
Sweet Unity Farms Coffee -- Goes Green
Sweet Unity Farms is securing solar panels for members of the
co-op. Each five-watt solar panel supplies:
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Four hours of electricity to a single light bulb, allows children to study into the evening and eliminate the danger of flame lit (candles) lighting.
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Continuous operation of radios and/or electronic equipment during the day allowing for communication, information, and entertainment
Up-Country International Products buys coffee from Sweet Unity
Farms through direct trade. By ensuring equity between buyer and
seller, coffee moves from Africa to America, improving the
quality of life on both sides of the Atlantic.
Organizations linked to Up-Country International Products by
direct trade agreements are committed to producing coffee
excellence. They are also builders of human development.
Up-Country strives to develop a part of the world were farmers
are both tillers of the soil and leaders, plowmen and planners
of their community’s future.
Up-Country has assisted the individual farmers that make up the
Mshikamano cooperative to secure and finance solar panels, tin
roofing and well water digging projects in farming villages, in
large part, through its direct trade payment formula.
New York based Management Team
Up-Country International Products, Inc.
75 Varick Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10013
April 1, 2010
Re: Chris Petrosino and coffeecare.us
Dear Coffee Lover:
We have known Chris Petrosino for close to a decade and are familiar
with the charity he founded, The DirectFund Foundation. We are
supportive of Chris' business / charitable model of selling coffee grown
by Sweet Unity Farms in Tanzania, Africa. To that end, coffeecare.us
has been enlisted as a certified distributor of the coffee we import
directly from the farmers in Tanzania.
We look forward to the opportunity of making our coffee available to you
in support of coffeecare.us. If you have any questions, please feel
free to contact us at orders@upcountryinternational.com or 212-239-3543.
Sincerely,
Jerry Lewis,
Managing Partner