Hello, CQI community.
There have been a lot of headlines over the last week, but I want to make sure that we don’t lose track of some really good news. Last Saturday, CQI held our annual Luncheon in Houston, where we were delighted to be joined by so many of you. For those of you who couldn’t be there, I want to share three new ways CQI is working to advance its mission to improve the quality of coffee and the lives of the people who produce it.
The first is an expansion of the CQI Global Coffee Fund. We created the fund in 2023 to expand access to coffee quality education in coffee-producing countries. That year, we implemented one pilot project in partnership with AFCA, the African Fine Coffees Association, to train leaders from coffee sectors across East Africa. Last year, we increased our financial commitment nearly four-fold, supporting fourteen initiatives across eleven countries. In 2025, we are making a bigger financial commitment, with a target of $150,000 for scholarships for people who want to take our Post-Harvest Processing offerings, and fellowships for people who want to earn the credentials necessary to teach them. It may be a small start, but it is a start. We are inviting the industry to co-invest with us to support this important work. One way to do that is through direct grants to our Global Coffee Fund.
The second way to do that is through our new Pennies-per-Pound Program. This initiative allows roasters to designate per-pound contributions to CQI in their green coffee contracts, similar to other check-off programs in place around the industry. I am delighted to recognize and thank the seven traders who have committed to help us get this program started in support of our mission:
If you are a roaster looking for ways to support CQI and you work with any of these traders, please consider building a penny or two per pound for CQI into your green coffee contracts.
Finally, I am happy to announce that SCA committed last week to making important annual contributions to CQI to support our project work. Against the backdrop of the closure of CQI’s most important donor, USAID, and broad disinvestment in international development work, we are grateful to SCA for its leadership and look forward to opportunities to deepen our engagement with all of you and the rest of the industry to serve the mission that has motivated us from the start: to work to ensure that producers participate fairly in the opportunities created by quality coffee. For more on this historic agreement, please see the press release here.
We will be traveling widely in 2025 and look forward to meeting with you to explore ways we can advance this mission together.
With kind regards and gratitude for your continued support of CQI and our mission,
Michael
