The Mighty Pod

The Mighty Peace train heads home to our beloved Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time with We Rise. Managing Partners Jim and JD set the stage for an episode led by the all-women Chiefdom, Chief Executive Officer Liza Elena Pitsirilos and Chief Quality Officer Linda Mugaruka. A Master Agronomist and respected community and coffee leader, Linda shares stories of new varieties, advanced practices, the impact of Covid, and emerging trends in Congo coffee. You will need a cup listening to this episode - Enjoy Peace with Every Sip!

The Mighty Peace train has returned from West Africa, arriving in Boston - on the frontlines of the Covid pandemic. We hear the first-hand accounts of Julie Kabukanyi, a Boston-based Congolese nurse in a Covid unit, and our brother in activism Garrett Moore returns from Episode 1 with updates and reflections. We are on the edge of our seats as we hear them open up about the birth of the modern day human rights movement Stand with Congo, and the 2017 meeting that sparked the birth of Mighty Peace Coffee a year later. We meet the big bosses at Mighty Peace Coffee, Liza Elena Pitsirilos, CEO and Jim Ngokwey, Managing Partner. Liza and Jim take us behind-the-scenes, opening up with stories that led four entrepreneurs to start Mighty Peace Coffee as a model of regenerative sustainable business, leaving a legacy we can be proud of.

Mentions/Handles: Tom Perriello, Cindy McCain, Fred Bauma, Barriques, Bodhi Leaf, Ampersand

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Senator Young, will you #StandWithCongo | Activists from all corners of the United States met with foreign affairs leader Senator Young urging legislative action #congo #elections

A post shared by JD Stier (@jdstier) on Oct 3, 2017 at 8:22am PDT

In the final chapter of our series opener, JD, Abdul, and Aminata take us from the early days of an outbreak (Episode 1), what it took to lead a nation to focus on public health (Episode 2), and now in part three - the Road to Recovery (This Episode!). Aminata and Abdul share that the road to recovery in their great nation required (1) A common cause, we as a people begin to speak with one voice; (2) Public health, it's not complex at the individual level, maintain social distance, wash hands, encourage testing and treatment; and (3) Media leads the way - reclaim the media narrative for survivorship, yes we can make it, and yes, I survived, we survive, and now let's get on the road to recovery. As Aminata says "we never relent!" We focus on critical public health actions and social responsibility. There was life before Ebola, there is a life after the outbreak. Here is our story.

 

Host: JD Stier

Co-host: Abdul Jalloh

Guest: Aminata Kargbo

 

Writer: JD Stier, Abdul Jalloh

 

Handles/Mentions:

Jeffrey Wright

Paul Farmer

Partners in Health (org)

Paul G Allen Family Foundation

The Mighty Peace train returns to Freetown Sierra Leone to meet again with Aminata Kargbo and Abdul Jalloh, along with host JD Stier the three explore what it took to contain and end the Ebola outbreak in west Africa. They explore the effects of complacency, the societal cost of ignoring public health actions, which we can see manifesting as protests in the United States today. In this episode there’s deep discussion about the strategies, tactics, and solidarity necessary to contain and end the outbreak. There are powerful lessons we can derive from west Africa’s success, We rise.

Handle: Global Citizen

Handle: Verizon

Handle: Paul G Allen Family Foundation

 

Host: JD Stier

Guests: Abdul Jalloh, Aminata Kargbo

 

A clip from the Team Survive Live event in Freetown Sierra Leone spring 2015

 

 

 

 

 

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@isurvivedebola launches #teamsurvive Sierra Leone @seansouthey

Ein Beitrag geteilt von JD Stier (@jdstier) am Mär 18, 2015 um 7:36 PDT

 

 

 

 

 

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Love to #teamsurvive Sierra Leone. Thank you! Off to Conakry today to meet #teamsurvive Guinea

Ein Beitrag geteilt von JD Stier (@jdstier) am Mär 21, 2015 um 2:05 PDT

At Mighty Peace Coffee, our values: people, the planet, and peace drive our decisions. When the pandemic hit, we found ourselves in a position to do more than deliver epic coffee and powerful transformative coffee stories. Host JD Stier's background is in public policy and documentary filmmaking. In 2014 JD was hired to produce a 30 part documentary series profiling Ebola survivors. He flew from New York City into West Africa at the height of the Ebola outbreak, where he and his film crews worked with survivors in the three hardest countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. We are many weeks into this pandemic, and we are shocked at the lack of lessons we’re deriving from West Africa. West Africans were successful in containing the outbreak, protecting the rest of the planet.

 

The coffee industry is a global network of worldly, highly educated, and intellectually curious leaders. No other industry on earth has such a commitment to global citizenship, global cooperation, and working level expertise operating all around the world, including in some pretty rough countries, from The Americas to Africa and Asia. We had planned to launch our podcast, The Mighty Pod, interviewing epic baristas, bad ass roasters, farmers with swag from the Congo, yea - people like you, And we look forward to launching our podcast at an appropriate time. As Covid struck, we found ourselves in a position to be the ones to share those West African lessons, that successful focus which contained and ultimately shut down the Ebola outbreak. So instead of simply launching The Mighty Pod, today we launch a special eight part series, We Rise. 

 

We hope you enjoy our special series, our epic Congo coffee, and a music video JD produced as part of the Ebola response:

Omekongo - We Rise