Impacting People Positively
In our journey to bring delicious coffee to life, we come across a range of opportunities that grab at our heart strings and offer us the chance to reach out and impact people positively.
After years of direct trade sourcing, we’ve developed some incredible relationships and been offered a unique insight into the lives of many of our partners at origin. Working with these communities, we’ve embarked on a number of initiatives to lend a helping hand beyond the bean.
Current IPP Projects
Scarf Community, Australia
2019 - PRESENT
Hospitality upskilling and helping young people get a leg up? Sign us up, we said! We’re proud to be partnering with Scarf, who for years have been providing Hospo hands-on training, mentoring and work experience for youth with refugee or migrant backgrounds. They’re doing some awesome work and there’s many ways to support including their pop-up dinners.
Co-Ground Coffee
2016 - PRESENT
It's an honour for us to be partnered with Co-Ground Coffee. This social enterprise operate two cafes in Melbourne as well as a range of mobile options for events, workplaces and venues. In addition to the Five Senses contribution of coffee beans, both city cafes have support from Swinburne University and the Australian Red Cross. This collaboration enables Co-Ground to invest 100% of their café profits to improving access to education, employment, health and sanitation within their local and international projects. Within their café environment there are training opportunities with a particular focus on indigenous employment.
Born Brave
2026
Every year, thousands of babies are born prematurely, beginning life with incredible resilience and courage. Created in partnership with the Mercy Health Foundation, the Born Brave blend supports initiatives that improve outcomes for premature and vulnerable newborns, including research into the medical use of caffeine to assist infant breathing. As part of this initiative, Five Senses is donating $10 from every kilo sold to help support babies, families and neonatal healthcare professionals. Every cup of Born Brave is an opportunity to make a meaningful difference for some very brave little people.
CafeSmart, Australia
2011 - PRESENT
Drinking coffee and impacting people positively is literally our two favourite things. So it’s no surprise we get incredibly excited when CafeSmart rolls around each year. We love that CafeSmart works to help your hood; funds raised at your local cafe go towards helping people in your local region / town / suburb.
Long Miles Coffee, Burundi
2014 - PRESENT
Five Senses feels a strong sense of shared values around excellent quality coffee and social impact with the Long Miles crew. The organisation, attention to detail and positive relationships we saw on the ground were genuinely impressive. We’re excited to be increasing our involvement with Long Miles with both increased purchasing and support some of their development projects.
Tiga Raja, Sumatra
2013 - PRESENT
Dear to our heart, Tiga Raja is the mill we own and operate in the northern Sumatran region of Simalungun. Intimate with the network of small producers we collect from and the mill owners we are partnering with, we are proud of this coffee and confident that it is some of the cleanest processed coffee to come out of Indonesia.
But it hasn’t been an easy journey…
Communal Shamba, Tanzania
2017 - PRESENT
Tanzanian founders of Communal Shamba, husband and wife team, Keremba Warioba and Dr Mkunde Chachage worked and studied in Australia for over 10 years. Although they had no coffee experience, a strong passion for agriculture and social impact inspired us to offer support in getting their fledgling business off the ground.
Compassion Australia
2022 - PRESENT
Ride for Compassion Coast-to-Coast is the largest fundraising coast-to-coast cycling event in Australia. And yet the team comprised just 39 people in 2022. With a fundraising tally of $953,138 to date, that is an astonishing average of $24,439 per person. The 2022 event was responsible for 181 new child sponsorships (against a target of 150) and 120 of those came from new supporters who had never donated or sponsored with Compassion before. Five Senses was a proud supporter of the 2022 Compassion Ride-to-Coast Cycling event.
Past Projects.
Kintamani, Bali
2008 - 2012
As close neighbours to our north, we’ve had many years of productive involvement with the producers of Kintamani in Bali.
With regular investments in infrastructure, milling knowledge and professional agronomist development, it’s been really exciting to see the progress and engagement grow across the years. Annual trips to the region hosting groups of baristas and cafe owners from across Australia has resulted in some unique and heart lifting relationships with a rich cross-pollination of experiences.
Nanhi Kali, India
2012 - 2015
For years now, we’ve championed the under-celebrated coffees of India.
There’s something about this country that gets under your skin and infuses you in a way that stays long after you’ve left its shores. Travelling through India in search of coffee, we caught glimpses of life surrounding the farms where the plight of girl children is dire. In a country dominated by a dowry system, the lives of these girls are often chronically disadvantaged. Commonly being seen as an economic disadvantage to the family, these children are sidelined, opportunities withheld from bright young minds.
For the past several years, we’ve enthusiastically driven a fundraising campaign for the Nahni Kali program. Organised by the Naandi Foundation, this effort works towards aiding the plight of these vibrant young girls by providing primary education support. Partnering with a rotating roster of some of our stellar cafes, we’ve raised 10s of thousands of dollars and now support over 190 girls through school each year.
Learn more about Nahni Kali here.
