Guayakí Yerba Mate’s primary objective for managing our community impact is to support the human rights of the producers we source from, the communities where we work, and the customers who sustain us. Through fair trade funds, community service, donations, and advocacy and engagement, we support the regenerative development of the communities where we source and operate in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil as well as where we operate in the US and Canada.
Smallholder, traditional, and Indigenous producers and their communities form the backbone of Guayakí’s yerba mate sourcing and play a critical role in our overall business. Guayakí recognizes the importance of sourcing from these traditional, Indigenous, and smallholding farms as means to support regenerative agricultural practices, but also to support local economic systems and empower producers to support their own community projects. We are proud that Guayakí helped pioneer regenerative agriculture for yerba mate production in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil through direct, long-term relationships and partnerships with producers and harvesters. Establishing fair trade prices for green leaf mate covers production costs and provides an added premium compared to conventional market prices, supporting a more regenerative production system and business model. Guayakí intends to continue to build on this foundation and grow its presence in the region in the years to come.
As part of our Fair for Life certification, Guayakí Sustainable Rainforest Products, Inc. pays additional premiums for each yerba mate purchase. Producer communities utilize the fair trade fund to invest in projects that will directly support their social, cultural, health, education, economic, and environmental conditions.
In addition to the projects from fair trade premiums and funds mentioned above, we also support the producer communities in South America from whom we source through charitable donations. Below are additional examples of community projects Guayakí supported in South America in 2022.
In addition to our smallholder producers and Indigenous community partners in South America, we also consider how best to support our communities in North America, which include local community groups where we operate in the US and Canada.
Guayakí donated $591,770 in total global charitable financial and in-kind contributions in 2022. The majority (91%) of Guayakí's total charitable contributions were directed towards yerba mate communities and landscapes in South America; in particular, 83% of donations were made to non-profit organizations in South America that support regenerative projects in Indigenous, traditional, and smallholder communities, and promote regeneration through research, environmental education, and the implementation of agroecological systems (see the “Community Projects in South America” section to read about projects funded by the foundations).
Additional donations of $10,000 each were made to non-profit organizations in North America including LandPaths, an environmental education and conservation organization fostering a love of the land in Sonoma County, California, and to Solar Responders, whose mission is to provide disaster relief first responders with renewable energy sources.
We also contributed $8,000 to the Intersectional Environmentalist which aims to empower a new generation of environmentalists and reshape the future of environmentalism to one that is rooted in equity and inclusion, $7,500 to Daily Acts, whose vision is to create healthy, just, and sustainable communities built upon the daily actions of people, and $5,000 to the Whole Planet Foundation, dedicated to poverty alleviation and empowerment of the world’s poorest people with microcredit in places where Whole Foods Market sources products.
Lastly, financial and in-kind donations <$5,000 were made to Sistema B, Boards 4 Buddies (pictured in the photo at left), Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs (RAVEN), Safe Place for Youth Venice, and more. In 2022, we developed a new Charitable Donations Policy to be rolled out in 2023 to further operationalize our impact, provide sustainable support to our communities and partners, and better align with our impact and regeneration strategy.
Guayakí believes firmly that we must engage in collective action to achieve a regenerative future for our stakeholders, partners, communities, industry, and planet. As previously mentioned, we partner with our valued third-party certifiers such as the Regenerative Organic Alliance and Fair for Life and local organizations in North and South America to implement community projects through fair trade funds as well as financial and in-kind donations. We also partner with One Step Closer, a trusted network of values aligned CEOs in the natural products industry and its Packaging Collaborative and JEDI Collaborative, as well as the Naturally Network, which seeks to elevate the power and impact of conscious business practices inthe natural and organic products ecosystem through programming, networking, influence, and collaboration.
