Impact. It’s one of the most overused word in business these days.
When we set out to seek answers about our partners’ impact, it almost felt like an exam to them, because we went about it in the usual, top-down way with lists of questions and checkboxes. So we went back to the drawing board and nudged our producers how they would like to define impact. We got 14 different partners answering that question in their own style. Most of the answers revolved around the same themes, but it’s the accents that count, that describe every unique context, character of our partner, culture and political climate.
Click on the images below to find out what is behind every one of our partner’s answers: an ongoing review of what intrinsically motivates them and their farmer communities to create the impact they themselves defined.
This Side Up simply supports these trusted producers’ impact goals by providing a stable and transparent link to the market.
And our commitments? Millennium goals? Why boast with that if you can show actions you are taking right now, not in one or two greenwashy projects but in every one of our value chains, in every origin?
With some partners we focus on regenerative agriculture, with others on retaining and inspiring rural youth... Yet there is a constant that we can capture in the form of the development path..
So how do we know we are on the right path?
In our experience (and quite logically), the longer you are on a certain path and can show results, the more likely you are to achieve more good results in the future.
Instead of an annual impact report, we use this page to celebrate our partners’ achievements ongoingly. For this, we use their own criteria in the form of “Key Path Indicators”.
If Key Performance Indicators are imposed on suppliers, Key Path Indicators stem from in depth talks about our partners’ own developmental goals. - This lines out a certain development path and shows where they / we are on it. It then gives us a handle on how likely it is that future goals will actually be achieved and what we can do together to attain these goals.
