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00:00I've always wanted to start a win a prize. And so for me with a cause that was really dear to me is helping women and empowering women in the developing world. And that really has a lot to do with just my background as a Vietnamese in the brand. You know my and my parents came here with nothing. We had to start literally all over. And with a little bit of help and access to opportunity we were all able to really lift ourselves up. I'm an avid avid teetering poor. All I drink is tea and water and a cup of coffee in the morning. And I knew because I was an avid tea drinker that there were issues in the supply chain. Unfortunately there is a lot of worker exploitation that that happens. And the majority of those workers and tea pickers tended to be women. And so that spurred me to go to Kenya. Kenya is the third largest Haidi Lun region in the world and has the highest number of smallholder farmers where we could be our social impact. And so when I when I didn't first I didn't know anything about property. The intent was just to talk to these women. Five percent of our profits go towards what I call the future initiative. And what that does is it funds three critical areas for these women. One is training and education. Just basic skills to make sure that they understand and manage their household and their budget. And the second piece will be a scholarship for their kids. So in Kenya you have to pay to go to school after the eighth grade. What ends up happening is that they drop out and they repeat the cycle of poverty. So we want to be able to offer scholarships to their children. The third piece is the biggest piece. And so it's access to land in Kenya 95 percent of land is owned by men because it's passed down generationally couple ways. And so with land you're able to get credit you're able to get additional cash crops. You're able to you know make more income. You're able to do all of these things. If you have access to this empowering asset which is what we aim to do for these women the better we do and the bigger we get the more impact we'll be able to make for these women. And so we want just launched nationally into. Just this past June which is a huge milestone for our company as the company grows and progressing. We want to be able to own the entire supply chain. So then we can control wages. So what these women are getting paid because right now we don't control that is a very good joint supply chain. But eventually we want to see factory and we want to own the farms that are the purple piece. We want to be able to pay maybe timber for a living wage and pay them fairly treated like.

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Making Tea With a Purpose: Purpose Tea Founder

Chi Nguyen, Purpose Tea CEO and founder, talks about how her company hopes to empower and make better lives for female tea pickers in Kenya. She explains how her three-step approach will stop the cycle of impoverishment for Kenyan women. (Source: Bloomberg)

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