St. Paul's Dignity Coconuts works with farmers in the Philippines to improve conditions
ST. PAUL, Minn. — There's a town in the Philippines, just south of Manila, that has a deep connection to St. Paul.
Turns out, it's a popular fruit that's the connection.
It's fair to say that coconuts are having a moment. Coconut oil is used for skin care, and also for cooking and baking.
Coconut oil is also now a St. Paul man's mission, because of what he witnessed while doing mission work in the Philippines.
"They had lots of coconuts, rice and fish and we decided to take the coconuts and see, can we make products that are valuable that will help create jobs and create fair trade for these farmers?" Dignity Coconuts President Erik Olson said.
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Fairness is the goal. In his travels he witnessed how people are being trafficked to work for nearly nothing and coconut farmers are falling victim to predatory lenders.
"Traffickers usually prey on areas with low education and areas where there aren't jobs, so that people are really desperate and don't really know when these traffickers come by to offer them a job as a waitress or to be a housemaid in somebody's home in another country, they don't realize they are being trafficked," Olson said.
It's something Ivy, who Zoomed with WCCO from the Philippines, has seen firsthand.
"The life of the farmers, coconut farmer mostly, is very hard," she said. "We have no other jobs to turn to, when it comes to, to provide for our families."
Now, Olson and his St. Paul company are providing more jobs. They started Dignity Coconuts. They buy coconuts from local farmers for a fair wage, then make them into organic oil sold in the U.S.
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Ivy's family runs one of those farms. She was able to get a four-year degree and then come back and work with Dignity.
"The impact of Dignity has been incredible for me because I don't have to find or to be away from my family to find good paying job," she said. "Dignity also allowed me, as a woman, to have confidence to be, that a woman can be a leader."
The company now works with 156 farms.
"Half the farmers I met with on my last trip to the Philippines had sent at least one kid to college. It was just — I couldn't believe it," Olson said. "We want to help people out of this extreme poverty in a way that gives them dignity, gives their dignity back."
And now so many more people can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Dignity Coconut Oil is available in a thousand stores in the U.S., locally you can find it at Coborn's or on Amazon. They're hoping to grow into more Minnesota stores.
As for Ivy, she is thriving. Susan-Elizabeth Littlefield will have more on her ascending success Monday on WCCO.
