Global Coffee Platform Holding 1st Membership Assembly in Geneva

The Gobal Coffee Platform, formed earlier this year through a restructuring of the 4C Association and the Sustainable Coffee Program, is holding its first membership assembly, taking place Wednesday, Oct. 5, in Geneva, Switzerland.

It is the first major public opportunity for the GCP’s members and partners to see the initiative’s existing progress and weigh in on future plans working toward a multi-stakeholder, noncompetitive approach to creating a sustainable global coffee sector. In a sense, the Global Coffee Platform represents an intentionally wide-angle view of the ongoing work of individual certifying agencies, the coffee industry, governments, NGOs and others working within the sector by focusing on questions such as, “What does a unified and collaborative coffee sector look like?” and, “When will the coffee sector stop working separately and duplicating efforts?”

The GCP follows the Vision 2020 global agenda put forth earlier this year at the International Coffee Organization’s annual World Coffee Conference in Addis Ababa, promoting pre-competitive collaboration from players throughout the coffee sector to help improve livelihoods within coffee farming communities and the natural environment of coffee-producing areas. A large part of the efforts is a baseline common code that can be adopted and adhered to by actors large and small throughout the global sector.

The agenda, and travel and registration for the one-day Geneva membership assembly is now available here, and following is more from GCP on the broader focus of the event:

Under the theme Accelerating Meaningful Change Together, the Membership Assembly provides an unrivalled networking opportunity to meet coffee leaders from all corners of the world and to learn the very latest on the coffee sector’s journey towards sector-wide alignment and collective impact.

The day-long event convenes producer organizations, international coffee companies, government representatives, civil society organizations and donor agencies to discuss and cooperate on identified work-streams and country work-plans so that they can walk away with actionable next steps.

This is the very first Membership Assembly of the Global Coffee Platform since its launch at the beginning of the year. It is therefore the first chance for members and partners alike to witness first-hand the progress that has been made in building the strategy, structures, and collaborations that will enable us as a collective alliance to achieve a thriving, sustainable coffee sector.