Carolina Vergnano: Intervento alla Sapienza per Obiettivo 5

Good morning everyone, my name is Carolina Vergnano and I represent the fourth generation of our family business, Casa del Caffè Vergnano. I apologize for not being with you today. It was a great desire of mine, but unfortunately due to COVID I am forced to connect via media to try to give you my contribution, which I hope will still be valuable.

The Obiettivo 5 event is a wonderful event that we are proud to be part of, not only as a company but first and foremost as a person, as an entrepreneur, as a mother, and as a woman.

I want to open my intervention with some words taken—I will be very brief—from the book "Alone and Lost" by Eshkol Nevo, an Israeli writer. His words struck me deeply because I find them very contemporary and relevant. The greatest miracle is not water gushing from a rock, not manna falling from the sky, not the opening of the Red Sea. The greatest miracle happens when two people meet at the right moment and become a place, a true place, for each other.

Just today I was reading an article by this writer in Corriere della Sera that struck me very much. The writer, obviously affected a bit like all of us, first by the lockdown and today by the war and in general by great instability, tried to reflect on what, in his view, could save him, save us, and in particular what tools can truly save our humanity. Simplifying his answer: friends, books, and desires.

It struck me a lot, but above all it opened up a possibility of reflection and made me add something, because from my point of view, it is certainly friends, books, and desires, but there are two other concepts that are very, very important: work and change. And I like the idea of starting from the concept of change. Change is obviously a natural process, often exogenous, so it actually comes from outside us and forces us to adapt, to change accordingly. It certainly makes us more vulnerable because certainties can fall, routines can fall, but equally it can make us very strong, especially when we manage to make this change become something different. And in this case, the word evolution comes into play. So managing change, adapting to it, and transforming it into an evolution—which is tending toward something certainly different but something better that can make us feel like better, different people.

In this case, I like to tell my experience as an entrepreneur. First of all, I have been working in the company for 17 years, following the international development and marketing side. It's a passion that drives me, that takes up so much of my time in the office but also so much of my mind and my passions outside the office. But I am above all a woman and a mother of three children—the youngest is 7 years old and the oldest is 13—and so again, another great responsibility toward the concept of the future and toward the concept of what will save this humanity, because I feel called upon in the moment when my children will be part of it.

Two or three years ago, I asked myself how my work could change someone else's life. Certainly, work changes my life, and so there is an evolution of my person, trying to become a better person. But I would have liked—and so I put all my efforts and my mind to it—I like the idea of being able to bring change to other people. In this case, I did it certainly within the office, where in my team of people, all together we tried to evolve, to change, and to become better people. But we also decided to do it externally, and so in this case I like to tell you about our project, Women in Coffee, which I think truly manages to represent the word change.

Women in Coffee is a project born in 2019, strongly desired by me, that creates a direct connection with the women who work in coffee plantations. One morning I was reading an online article that said 75% of the workforce in plantations is women. It seemed so powerful to me, the message arrived so straight to my heart but above all to my head, that I had to do something, to transform it into action. And then we invented this project, Women in Coffee, which is basically—but not so simply—a fundraising effort. We said, let's try to raise funds through the sale of some objects, which I didn't yet have clearly in mind what they should be, to support the women in the plantations.

Then after some research, we discovered that there is actually an association that brings together these stories of women called the International Women in Coffee Alliance, which gathers some chapters—these are charters in some regions of the world where there are strong stories of plantations managed predominantly by women who need support, who need help to change. And here the word change spoke to us directly. So, to change: in the first case, we found a story of 21 women working in a plantation in the Dominican Republic, in the Valle del Hondo, who had a very strong desire to change for the better their green coffee production. They wanted to improve the organoleptic profile of the coffee, and so we entered the field. We first understood the situation and asked ourselves what tools they needed to manage their change. We opened the fundraising to purchase a small roaster and set up a small quality office so they could taste the coffee and create direct sales to increase revenue and reinvest in the plantation, but also to improve the quality of the coffee. Because perhaps you all don't know, but coffee when it is produced needs to be roasted and tasted to understand if the organoleptic profile is up to standard. And so this small gesture created a virtuous mechanism within the plantation, where they became more conscious of their product but above all they started to grow.

We launched an iconic object to raise funds: a pink cup. It seemed banal to us, perhaps a bit feminist at first, but in reality it was liked universally, democratically, and immediately. This cup took flight and allowed us in a few months to collect the necessary funds to buy the roaster, send it to the plantation, but above all to send an installation and training service to involve them in its use and support them in evolving the quality of their coffee.

At that point, the Women in Coffee project was no longer just a pink cup or many objects—it was and is a project for bars, because in reality anyone can join the Women in Coffee project. The market brought us this request and we immediately moved to Honduras. We said, the Dominican Republic we continue to support from afar, keeping a line of communication open, but we must be active on the field again to bring a new change. In this case, we understood how the concepts of empowerment and culture were the true drivers of change. So in Honduras, this time in the Marcala area—a famous zone where quality Arabica is produced—there was a need for a plantation managed by many women, not only by women but above all managed by a community, because very often in plantations people don't just go to work and then go home—they live on the plantation. And so we decided to involve the families, creating a space. We are in the process of—we have almost concluded the fundraising, so we are ready to start the construction. There is a space linked to the concept of culture, a library for families where they can gather in free moments, where they can evolve together.

And so again, Women in Coffee seemed to us the way to bring change to other people. But the most surprising thing is that when you foster change in a person or a community, this creates change in us. The most surprising thing is that we are evolving, growing, and changing thanks to having managed to bring change externally, to another area.

Women in Coffee is not the only project we have in this area. In the field of empowerment, we collaborated with Fantasia and in particular with Elisa Sednaoui, the founder of this wonderful foundation that deals with gender equality and empowerment, and that brings culture to those who don't have the means to afford it, on par with more developed communities. And so with Elisa, we set up a project of selling special editions of a magazine to raise funds to create courses dedicated to girls—but not only girls, also boys, adolescents—where the entire training moment is linked to the concept of empowerment, of growing, of improving, of seizing the best from the outside to reach one's own goals and dreams.

And this brings me back to a concept that I think is very important, particularly when the audience is made up of many people who still need to define and give shape to their future. Besides the word change, I mentioned earlier the word work. In a time of great uncertainty, when everything seems to wobble, when you wake up in the morning and don't know if the world situation will be the same by evening—it's not just me, but it was extrapolated from our work group—how work is a fundamental value to hold firm when building one's future. Because work is not just an eight-hour commitment during the day, but what I believe gives a great opportunity that is perhaps a bit unexplored by generations: that work can become the cornerstone, the pillar that allows you to lean on it, to be so engaged that you don't go off track, and above all to build yourself a goal. Because today what allows us to be centered, to move forward believing in this world—we cannot stop believing in this world—certainly passes through work, in which I firmly believe, in which I am involved body and soul, much more than eight hours, but which fulfills me and gives me that long-term goal that animates my days.

I wake up with a great dream. I realize that the world and work are very complicated, and I realize that this goal may be a bit more difficult to reach sometimes, that situations can be complicated. But my recommendation is: don't stop having that great goal that can be born from a passion, from a skill, even from an opportunity, because often life gives us great open doors that we may not see. But having a clear goal that guides our days is something that allows us to overcome the most wobbling moments, the most uncertain moments. And work requires effort, and this is not trivial and should not be forgotten.

During the lockdown, I worked with many people who had moments where they said, maybe the lockdown made us realize we should enjoy life a bit. But I learned the opposite: that in moments of great uncertainty, effort, goals, and work are a solid pillar to anchor to, and they should animate our days, our long-term plans, and our goals.

With this, I conclude. I hope to have contributed in my own small way and to be able to grow together. I am available on another occasion, which I would love to organize, or otherwise via direct messages on Instagram or any channel you can find to answer and deepen this topic, which I am very involved in and care about deeply. Thank you very much for the opportunity, and have a good day everyone.