Our People explore the cultures and origins of coffee

Savouring a quality coffee makes us love the fruit of this tropical plant. But discovering the process behind the finest blends and observing from close up the painstaking labour needed to produce the beans makes us love it even more.

Visit the heart of a coffee plantation - sunshine filtering languidly through the canopy of trees - and you’ll discover all the dedication needed to grow quality bushes in equilibrium with nature. Admiring the ripe drupes still on the bush and watching expert hands working the land improves our understanding of the art that leads the bean towards the cup. After an experience of this sort, every espresso delivers the essence of those who work for the sustainability of the plantations, environmental protection and the emancipation of farming communities.

The Programme

The Ambassador Program offers some of our people, all over the world, the opportunity to visit coffee and tea plantations in producer countries and watch from close up the transformation in progress in our supply chain development processes. Selection for the programme involves interviews that examine various criteria, including recent voluntary work, aptitude for collaboration across cultural divides and the extent to which the programme could further applicants’ careers and personal development. 

The Ambassadors visit coffee producing communities and do real work in the plantations to understand the challenges, appreciate the importance of the collaboration programmes run by the Group and discover the story of the communities that make all this possible. An opportunity to study the local culture and connect with only apparently distant worlds, creating bonds and gathering wide-ranging knowledge and awareness, treasures to take home and experiences to share with colleagues, fostering a diffused culture.

Our partnerships

Active in the field through numerous organisations funded by our Foundation, we promote good farming practices and redistribute the wealth generated along the entire chain: for years now, we’ve been running programmes to support local communities, improve the quality of the plantations and foster sustainable agriculture.

We aim to make our People and their community more aware of and active in these places, convinced as we are that coffee culture is a growth opportunity and a way to build a new and more balanced relationship with the environment.