Dean's Beans Sponsors Innovative Radio Show for Coffee Farmers

3.16.2007 - 01:00pm ET

Press release from: Dean's Beans Organic Coffee Company

Dean's Beans Sponsors Innovative Radio Show for Coffee Farmers

(CSRwire) March 16, 2007- Coffee farmers around the world suffer from lack of access to current news about global market prices, the latest growing and processing techniques and a host of other vital information about their primary crops. This puts them at an unfair disadvantage when negotiating prices with Northern brokers and local middlemen, or when seeking crop quality improvements. Dean's Beans, a 100% Fair Trade, Organic Coffee company, is doing something about that. In partnership with Cultural Survival, Inc., a nonprofit indigenous rights organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dean’s Beans is sponsoring "Coffee Talk", a weekly coffee program geared towards hundreds of Guatemalan farmers. The first programs will raise awareness about how coffee farmers can achieve greater economic gains through organic crop certification.

Cultural Survival launched the five year Guatemala Radio Project in 2006 as a way to support community-run radio programs in a country that has historically been hostile to local, indigenous groups looking to use the country’s air-waves. Cultural Survival is working hard to legalize and protect these radio programs. The five year initiative specifically aims, with the help of 150 indigenous community radio stations, to improve program quality, purchase much needed broadcasting equipment, and put stations on the path towards financial stability. In addition, programming is offered in numerous indigenous languages.

Dean Cycon, founder of Dean's Beans, came up with the idea for "Coffee Talk" to provide remote Guatemalan farmers with some of the tools they need to survive and improve their lives in the international coffee markets. He witnessed the need for this service during his numerous trips to visit coffee growing cooperatives in the Highlands of Guatemala. The programming serves a critical need in rural coffee growing communities, where access to television, internet and even print media is limited at best.

"The show provides news through interviews with technical, financial and marketing experts, by providing pricing information, and by establishing a venue for farmers to share their own concerns and achievements" explains Cycon, "This is a one of a kind radio program for Guatemalan coffee farmers."

This initiative is one of many People-Centered Development projects designed by Dean’s Beans and implemented with the company's coffee growing partners across the globe. Other projects range from micro-finance and healthcare projects for indigenous Guatemalan women's groups, to well-building in Ethiopia, reforestation in Peru, technical capacity support in Papua-New Guinea and renewable energy financing in Mexico. To learn more about these and a host of other cutting-edge initiatives, visit: www.deansbeans.com.

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