Join Our Volunteer Community!

Bean Voyage has welcomed a number of volunteers and interns over the years, and we’re always looking for more to collaborate with! With your specific skill set in mind, we will work with you to develop a series of objectives.

If you are looking to join our team, please fill out the form on this page.
(Please note that Bean Voyage has limited funding so most funding should be sourced externally.)

Project Structure

Bean Voyage’s internship and volunteer programs are unique in that they are focused on developing inter-departmental skills among volunteers and help them engage in a variety of projects.

how do our past volunteers describe Bean Voyage?

“I know this sounds cheesy but the first thing I thought was that working with Bean Voyage really changed my life: First, getting to know some of the producers personally, being invited to their homes and onto their fincas, learning about coffee first hand and being poured love and food forever coined the associations I have with coffee and my memories of Costa Rica. It is their warmth, hospitality and joy that I miss most about my time in Costa Rica.

Then of course in terms of my coffee drinking habits. Before starting at BV, I actually wanted to give up coffee drinking completely. I never managed to after working with BV! and have now accepted my addiction as part of my life. Before starting to work with BV, I had known from my fairtrade lecture that specialty coffee requires skilled hands and skilled hands are in a better place to demand better working conditions, hence specialty coffee tends to be more “fair trade” than conventional coffee. BV’s care trade approach seemed to perfection specialty coffee. Yet, not getting BV coffee delivered to Germany made me give the supermarket coffee I used to drink before discovering BV another try. But even though I still don’t understand how people can taste vinegar or garlic notes and I always felt like the weird one out during coffee cuppings, the supermarked coffee project failed dramatically and the opened bag was gifted to someone else - The difference in taste showed me how we really get used to particular smells and tastes.

Fun fact: While it’s been four years on specialty coffee for me (!), it only took my friend who I gifted a BV bag that one bag to get hooked. But my love for BV goes a bit further than hipster coffee drinking habits. Though there are a looooot of structural challenges on the supply side, through BV I got to experience that under the right conditions, coffee production isn’t just making money, it’s everything we once recorded the Frailes’ women farmers saying: it’s life, passion, happiness, joy, energy, livelihood, peace - and work, of course. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id8LY601KBY) BV’s care trade approach is proof that the conditions for dignified working conditions and sustainable livelihoods can go hand in hand with delicious coffee even under extreme market (international coffee prize, shipping costs,...) and regulatory (e.g. export and import requirements) pressures. My hope for the future is that those pressures will be relaxed in the future, that BV will strive and that that way agricultural production will mean life, passion, happiness, joy, energy, livelihood and peace to every farmer in the world.”