Psydeh + Lemonaid & Charitea Foundation
Why We Collaborate
The Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation is a non-profit organization started and funded by its for-profit parent company the Lemonaid Beverages company. The company makes iced tea (ChariTea) and lemonades (Lemonaid) from the best ingredients, organic & Fairtrade, from cooperatives & plantations around the world. They pay higher prices for the ingredients and thereby support fair, dignified farming. And they go beyond Fairtrade: every bottle sold gives an additional 5 cents to their Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation. To date, they’ve collected more than 6 million euros for social projects in the regions from which they source their ingredients.
Where We Focus Our Efforts
The Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation aims to contribute to the sustainable improvement of social, economic, and ecological structures in the Global South, particularly in regions that have been negatively affected by the structures of the global economy. They fund transformational projects that assign responsibility and ownership for the implementation of projects to local partners, focusing on supporting entrepreneurial and income-generating initiatives to promote economic independence.
The Foundation first met PSYDEH when we participated in the German online competition #youforG20 in late-2017. One year later, PSYDEH accompanied their staff visiting existing and potential Mexican non-profit partners in Hidalgo and Puebla. They reciprocated this interest by visiting our target work areas. We then exchanged ideas and proposals in 2019 before suspending negotiations due to the pandemic in 2020. With the reopening of European economies in mid-summer 2021, the Foundation reinitiated the conversation that resulted in a three-year grant we use to produce our 2022-2024 Sierra Madre Network programming supporting Indigenous female artisans to start their own cooperatives through 2024.
Why it is a Win-win Alliance
Lemonaid’s generous investment in PSYDEH shows how they are socially responsible in the areas from which they source their ingredients. Here, they buy agave syrup as a natural sweetener from producers in Hidalgo, Mexico, the state in which most of our programming takes place.
For PSYDEH’s part, this type of corporate-foundation alliance is similar to what we have done with the Kroll advisory firm and, yet, a first-of-its-kind for PSYDEH. The investment’s medium-term nature of three years of funding focused on making a long-term impact helps us to be forward-thinking on operations and programmatic planning. It is anchor funding from which we can attract other institutional donors to co-invest in the same programming. It also shows what is possible for Mexican nonprofits and corporate-foundation allies willing to think outside the box with an eye to engagement-facilitated impact, not just a one-off donation.