This trip has been great and incredibly informative. I want to open up my own coffee shop one day, so I went to Costa Rican hoping to learn about how coffee is farmed and how companies make the production process as sustainable as posible. I do not want to roast my own coffee, but I do want to make sure that the farms and roasters that I source the coffee from are sustainable. This trip allowed me to learn what to look for when chosing which roasters to get my coffee from.

My topic for the final project was Multinational Organizations and Green Economy Intergration. Our visit to Kyndryl helped us understand Multinational Organizations the most; they explained how their business is organized and how they manage all fo their branches. Every week, one of the employees at the Costa Rican branch logs into a compliance meeting with other employees from across the globe to discuse how the Costa Rican Branch is following the company protocalls. If one branches has faced probles with complying to the protocalls, they are able to ask how other branches have delt with simular problems. These meetings allow Kyndryl as a whole to seem more cohesive.

Many of the agricultural businesses helped with the Green Economy Intergration aspect of our topic. Café Britt, specifically, described how they have a team dedicated to keeping the company carbon neutral and profitable at the same time. This team does the math, considering how many employees they have and weighing that against the amount of trees they have with their farms. This tour was also very relevant to the reason I came to Costa Rica in the first place. They described how they used the sun to roast their beans as they remove the layers, which is something I will now be looking for when deciding who to get my coffee beans from.

Another agricultural company we visited was Sibo Chocolate, which was my favorite of the businesses we visited. The owner we talked to was fully dedicated to being sustainable because he viewed it as a responsiblity instead of a marketing strategy. He said that the company pays up to three times more then companies like Hershey for their chocolate because Sibo pays for their coffee to be shaded. This strengthens the taste of the chocolate and allows for biological bridges that help animals cross from conservation to conservation. It was clear that he has done a lot of reasearch and put a lot of thought into how to create the most ethical chocolate. The advertisement of their sustainability efforts allows them to raise their prices and maintain profits.

The final example of Green Economy Intergration is from Café Monteverde, they grow their own coffee as well as buying coffee from other faimilies. In their own farms, they make sure to compost everything posible, and they grow everything the feed their workers and visiters in the plantation. This lowers costs and allows them to have variaty in their plantation, cutting down the need for fertilizers and pesticides (something they are continueing to work on). Half of their profit if from tourism, allowing even more room to push twoards sustainablity.

I think this entire trip will help my career; I do not know many baristas who have traveled abroad to study coffe, so I am hoping this gets me hired in the fall. Additionaly, all of the information I learned about sustainabal agriculture and about coffee production specificaly will help me grow my business and remain sustainable along the way.

Thank you for a great trip and opportunity!