Diversity, equity and inclusion. 

These are the promises that we as a Group have made to all our People, from those who work in the communities where we operate, to each and every one of our collaborators, with the goal of becoming a Gap-Free company. 

We’ve decided to embrace Goal 5 – Gender Equality as one of our top-priority Sustainable Development Goals, transforming it into a declaration of intent which will guide our actions. 

This is our Manifesto, written by our own People in a major co-creative effort, for a future without unfairness, without barriers, and without gaps to bridge.  

Discover the meaning of this pathway, which is supported at the highest levels of our Group, in the words of our Chief Executive Officer, Antonio Baravalle, and of the Lavazza family.

Our network of collaborations, in line with Goal 17 of the 2030 Agenda – Partnerships for the goals.

Gap-Free is a programme that we launched in 2020: a pathway of cultural transformation to promote equal opportunities and the fostering of diversity, with the ultimate aim of cultivating responsible growth capable of making a positive impact on the society we live in, starting with our Group. 

A structured, medium-long term pathway to eliminate all barriers and build an organisation free from discrimination of any kind, where everybody is able to express their own authenticity, one of the founding values of our Group. 

The Gap-Free initiative is made possible by collaboration between the Human Resources and the Institutional Relations and Sustainability Departments, applying the methodology of Theory U as conceived by Professor Otto Scharmer of MIT Boston — which has been used to great effect for over twenty years — through three working stages: 

1. listening and research: conducted throughout 2020, this stage enabled an understanding of our corporate culture in relation to equal opportunities and the identification of the gaps to be bridged, through over 1,800 online questionnaires for the entire population of the company worldwide, individual interviews and focus groups.

2. co-design and co-creation: in 2021, this stage saw us organise internal work groups with the task of drawing up concrete proposals to bring about the desired changes, with a bottom-up approach. This led to the establishment of the first GAP-FREE Community in Italy, with the aim of setting up others in the various countries where we operate as a global Group, involving our colleagues, male and female, in an increasingly vast network.

3. deployment: in 2022, we launched the cultural transformation plan prepared in the previous stage. 

Our network of collaborations, in line with Goal 17 of the 2030 Agenda – Partnerships for the goals.

The inclusion and emancipation of women and younger generations are among the key objectives of the projects promoted by our Foundation in coffee-producing countries, like Guatemala for example. Here, thanks to the “Coffee to be Reborn” project launched in 2016 in collaboration with local NGO Verdad y Vida, a group of courageous and resourceful women have made enormous strides in the production and marketing of coffee, helping to improve the quality of life of their families and of the communities to which they belong. And then there’s Taiz, one of the regions most badly affected by the ongoing conflict in Yemen, where one of the Foundation’s projects has reached over 1,000 people: through the growing and production of coffee, with a large-scale development programme, we have been able to help create livelihoods for people.