Back before every brand and its dog was trying to do good in the world, we saw an opportunity for Kenco to stand out against other coffee brands (who were just wanging on about how tasty their coffee was) by using coffee to make the world a bit better.
We looked at the countries where Kenco grow their coffee and realised many of them have a terrible gang problem. Particularly Honduras, “The most dangerous country in the world”, where twenty people are killed every day as a result of gang violence.
Many young Hondurans have no option but to join a gang. Unemployment is high and working for a gang is often the only way to make money. This got us thinking. Kenco could help young people avoid the gang life by giving them an alternative. Coffee farming.
We created Coffee Vs Gangs, a Honduras-based project that took twenty young people at risk of joining a gang and taught them everything they needed to know to run a coffee farm. For twelve months they trained together on a farm with the help of a Kenco mentor. At the end of the project, Kenco helped them buy and run their own coffee farms. The project was really successful, increasing Kenco's sales by 52% and helping transform the lives of young people.
A series of short documentary films followed their journey. Here's the trailer:
The films can be seen on the Coffee Vs Gangs microsite: coffeevsgangs.com
We even got a Honduran rapper (socio) to write a song about the project: