There Is No Specialty Coffee Without Education

On January 24, we celebrate the International Day of Education by thanking the farmers of the DABOV family. Thank you for constantly improving your skills and for providing an opportunity for your employees to acquire new knowledge.

Every year on January 24th, the International Day of Education promoted by the United Nations takes place. It celebrates the role of education in global peace and sustainable development.

Anybody can think of at least several reasons why education is essential. Education provides knowledge and a pth to self-perfection. It helps people understand the world around them. Sadly, however, over 72 million children around the world do not have access to education. Many more millions of children and adolescents don’t have the opportunity to complete their education for different reasons.

A lack of education is problematic in both developing and underdeveloped countries. One of the main reasons a child doesn’t go to school is due to an equal rights issue. These inequalities include gender and cultural identities. Besides bias, many countries cannot afford to build schools or provide schooling materials. They also have a hard time paying their teachers. The lack of finances, along with a lack of teachers, forces students of all ages to learn in the same oversized classroom.

Many coffee producing country face education challenges.

Do you know that one of the most affected areas is Sub-Saharan Africa? And there you can find most of the coffee producing countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania. In this region, there are thirty-two million uneducated children…

More than 54% of uneducated children are girls. In Yemen, over 80% of the girls in the country will never go to school.

Lack of education as a child leads to a higher risk of unemployment when they become adults. The dominoes continue to fall. A life without a job leads to poverty. The cycle is likely to start over, too.

Breaking the cycle is vital by making access to education a primary goal of every nation. Education is a human right. The United Nations lists the right to education in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that countries shall make higher education accessible to all.

Today we from Dabov Specialty Coffee want to celebrate International Education Day for two reasons.

We work with farms where child labor is prohibited.

As you already know, we choose to work with farms where child labor is prohibited. And not only that. Children go to school. In many cases, the farms that produce Dabov coffees take care of the school in their area financially. They also provide school supplies to the children. There are cases when they even build a school for the children of their workers. And in many places farmers encourage children to learn more about the work of their parents on the farm. This way they stimulate the children’s interest in this difficult agricultural but very necessary work for all of us.

Recall our article on World Day Against Child Labor. Read more about the initiatives in our partner farms: When You Choose Specialty Coffee, You Fight Against Child Labour

We work with farms where farmers are constantly achieving more knowledge and providing education to their workers.

Becoming a farmer who grows special coffee is not an easy task. The production of special coffee requires a lot of knowledge in various fields and continuous learning.

Being a farmer who manages to maintain a constantly high quality of his coffee, is a task that requires constant personal improvement. It also needs acquisition of new knowledge. Growing coffee is a relentless exercise for the mind and body, because every year brings different challenges for the farmers. Growing coffee is associated with many variables that make farmers’ formulas extremely complex higher mathematics. Only the most prepared, only those who are constantly alert and ready to discard obsolete knowledge and replace it in time with innovative solutions, some of which are still experimental, succeed.

And they succeed not only for their own benefit! They succeed also for the people they work with – the people who depend on them.