Panama Ponderings: Willy + Heidy Organic Chocolates

Like a few other individuals in Quebrada Pastor, I wanted to shine the spotlight on Willy, who has also played a huge role in my life here.

Willy has a fascinating story, and one I know well. After all, his family was my host family, so I lived with them for my first three months, and I still see them, hang out at their house, and do work with them all the time. We work together on aqueduct issues (he’s the president of the school aqueduct water committee), he enthusiastically helps me with trainings that I host for Volunteers and for the community, he loves helping me host visitors, and I help promote his business.

For a 24-year-old, he’s incredibly accomplished. He just officially registered his business, Heidy Organic Chocolates, a year ago, and has regular clients all over the Bocas Islands, expanding into other provinces in Panamá, and occasionally buyers from other countries. That’s pretty darn impressive for a guy who runs his business in his family’s house, usually just with the help of his wife and another person or two, making chocolates by hand without any electricity whatsoever (unless you count the solar-panel-powered lamp that allows them to make chocolates sometimes until 3:00 am).

He is passionate about his business because he is passionate about his home. He was raised by his dad and his grandmother, but when she died, Willy was 12, and his dad’s muscular dystrophy caused him to deteriorate rapidly thereafter, so Willy became the sole caregiver for his dad, at the same time he was attending high school and working at a store in Almirante to support the two of them. He was forced to grow up fast. He’s an unusually fast learner (he picked up speaking some Mandarin just by working at the Chinese-owned store, and he learned how to survey with an abney level faster than some Peace Corps trainees), and he was almost always the best student in his class, with a never-ending appetite for learning. Though he was offered special study abroad opportunities as far away as Ecuador and France, he chose to stay in Quebrada Pastor to care for his wheel-chair-bound father – which also excluded attending university to study science and become a professor, as he had wanted. So he turned his energy and ambition to making a better life in Quebrada Pastor.

He married Mechi and they had a daughter, Heidy. Then he turned his high-school business degree – with his daughter as inspiration – to the creation of Heidy Organic Chocolates. Though at first he and Mechi were working his father’s land to grow cacao and other produce to sell in Almirante, his business instinct led him to improve upon this model – Why sell cacao beans to the cooperative if you can process them into a consumer product – bars of baking chocolate – and sell that directly to customers, maximizing your profit? And why sell cacao bars in Almirante when you can get a better price selling them to tourists on the Bocas Islands? And isn’t it easier and more reliable to sell to regular clients (the tourist industry), ensuring a consistent demand, than just selling to random tourists on the street? And what if he could make other cacao products that consumers want, like cocoa powder, cocoa butter, dark chocolate candy bars, and cacao nibs? So with his charisma and work ethic, he built a network of clients – hotels, restaurants, and stores – and reliably followed through on delivering their orders each week.

Calling the business Heidy Organic Chocolates was no accident – he had been thinking about the future from the beginning – he wanted this to provide Heidy with the opportunities he had wanted as a child. And he wanted to do so in a sustainable, responsible way. He is well-versed in the concepts of sustainable agriculture, organic produce, and fair trade, and uses these both to guide his business model and to promote his products to consumers. His vision is community-oriented; he hopes that one day, the associates of the business – fellow community members – will share in the work of running the business and in the profits, benefitting other families of Quebrada Pastor. He hopes that, with more help, they’ll be able to produce more cacao products and host cacao tours for visitors. He hopes that when the business becomes truly profitable, they can invest in the Quebrada Pastor school and other community projects – that it can be a force for community-run development, and an impetus to improve the community – say, through better solid waste management, an example he often cites as a priority.

And to me, community-initiated, community-funded, and community-run development is indeed an appealing thought.

So even though I have no expertise in business or marketing or tourism or agriculture or food products (well, except for my ability to consume chocolate) – I agreed that I would help however I could. So I connected him to the Peace Corps network – which helped him sell to eager new clients (Volunteers all over Panamá) and opened up opportunities to connect with new clients owning stores and restaurants in other parts of Panamá. I’ve helped orchestrate trainings by agro-business and cacao Volunteers. I’ve tried to provide some ideas, or at least be a sounding board for his creativity. I’ve facilitated communication, sometimes through translation, and encouraged setting up systems to make transactions easier. And I’ve been his promoter, following up leads from other Volunteers, inviting friends to go on his cacao tour to give him practice, brainstorming and helping pursue ways to raise money to invest in growing his business.

To that end, I’m always looking to connect him to new resources – be that potential clients, sources of grants and funding, more information about business and cacao products, agro-business training opportunities, or people who want to go on a cacao tour – so if you know of something that could be helpful, please let me know. Or better yet, let him know yourself, at heidyorganicchocolates@hotmail.com or Heidy organic chocolates on Facebook, or even his website when he gets that up and running.

And do let me know if you want me to bring you any cacao when I return to America in September… J I hope by the time I’ve run out of my supply, he’ll be shipping chocolate directly to me in the States!

Pictures:

Willy loves giving cacao tours. Every time I have visitors, we go on a tour -- and he's been improving the content each time. Little-by-little, he's been increasing the amount of English he uses in the tour. He's getting ready for a legitimate ecotourism aspect to his chocolate business!

From some of the more recent tours:

(He doesn't let tour participants cut open cacao pods with machetes anymore. Probably wise. We'll call that a win for teaching about America's (litigious and liability-oriented) culture.)

Willy's tour was part of Tech Week last year!

Willy also loves the opportunity to share food with visitors, which he likes to include in the tour.

The Business:

From the official founding of the company, with its associates

Some of the lovely lady associates of the business, including his wife, and my good friend Nayelis (who has been working for Willy to save up for college next year).

Preparing the scene for the cacao photo shoot -- Willy had a WWOOF Volunteer for a few months, who has been helping him set up a website and continue developing his ecotourism component.

Willy has been involved in every seminar we've done in Quebrada Pastor -- here's a few:

Willy helped organize the Project Management and Leadership Seminar for several leaders in the community - and still cites things from the Seminar that have helped him be a more organized and better leader

And he hosted a cacao grafting training - given by an Agriculture Volunteer.

Willy was the only person from the all aqueduct groups in the community I worked with who wanted to learn how to use the abney level for surveying -- and then mastered it quickly -- to help gather information about the school aqueduct for making repairs

Celebrations! Willy is always pleased for me to make a birthday brownie cake (using his chocolate, of course), or to take part in whatever silly American traditions I come up with...

Heidy's 3rd birthday