Our Approach
Our Vision
The vision of International Coffee Partners (ICP) is to improve smallholder coffee farmers’ livelihoods by making them more competitive based on sustainable practices and enhancing their access to important services. This vision goes beyond implementing individual development projects. ICP’s objective is to contribute towards establishing a fair and sustainable coffee sector in all coffee-producing regions and countries.
Hands-On Partnerships
Establish direct cooperation with farmers, their families, and communities in a practical environment; provide the basis for the development of long-term partnerships with public/private organizations and companies.
Monitoring & Evaluation
Conduct continuous Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) to guide implementation and measure impact.
Learning
Learning together with farmers and partners for further developing the approach; assess experiences and preparing for scaling up.
Sharing
It is essential for ICP to share the learnings and experiences both good and bad so that practical solutions can be developed for the future.
Long-Term Partner
In addition to supporting smaller scale projects in various prominent coffee countries become a long-term partner in four key regions for coffee. Trifionio (triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), Brazil, Indonesia and East Africa (Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda).
Cooperation
Conduct hands-on projects and develop them into scalable best practice models; projects are implemented as public-private partnerships and in close cooperation with local and international organizations.
Our Values and Guiding Principles
The values of ICP are what is shared. As family businesses, there is a long-term view – and a genuine interest in creating a more sustainable coffee sector.
Quality
ICP is convinced that the global coffee market needs a strong smallholder farmer base to ensure the supply of coffee with superb quality and variety.
Accountability
“What you see is what you get.” We make ourselves accountable to all our stakeholders, publish our objectives and results on our website and are independently audited on an annual basis.
Sustainability
Continuous development has to be based upon a balance of the economic, social and environmental dimensions. The commitment of ICP with the farmer communities is therefore on a long-term basis. Established sustainability certifications can support this development but have to be based upon solid professionalization of the farmers and the introduction of improved practices.
Partnership
Each farmer, embedded in his community or cooperative, is a partner to us. We aim to create a level playing field by supporting farmer competitiveness. In our experience, a grassroots and hands-on project approach, working at market conditions, is one way to achieve this target.