Bob, the founder of the Muravah Foundation, has dedicated his life to ending poverty in rural regions of the Philippines. His journey started when he sponsored a child from a slum in Manila. He quickly realized that sponsoring children was not enough, and he needed to take a more comprehensive approach to address the root causes of poverty.
The Muravah Foundation takes a holistic approach to community development. They believe that education, healthcare, and job creation are critical to empowering people to permanently exit poverty. One of their most successful projects has been the cultivation of cacao. The foundation has helped farmers learn how to grow cacao alongside their coconut trees, which previously provided little income due to low market prices. The cacao industry has created work for people in the community, including single moms and grandparents caring for their grandchildren. The foundation pays double market rates to the farmers, and profits from chocolate sales are split between the farmers, the factory, and community projects, including the sponsorship of children.
The Muravah Foundation has also focused on building typhoon-proof homes, health centers, and schools. They have rebuilt schools and provided meals to children who would otherwise go hungry. They have also built a health center where babies can be delivered safely and a large water tank that provides irrigation to farmers.
The foundation’s approach has improved the lives of countless families in the Philippines. By focusing on education, healthcare, and job creation, the foundation is empowering people to permanently exit poverty. They are creating a sustainable solution to poverty that will benefit the community for generations to come.
The foundation’s work is a testament to the power of education and community-driven development. Bob and his team have shown that by working together, they can significantly impact the world and create a brighter future for all. Their efforts remind us that we all have the power to make a difference, no matter how small our contribution may seem.
If you want to support the Muravah Foundation’s mission to end poverty in the Philippines, you can connect with them through their website… or… you can find their chocolate available on Amazon!
To find out more, visit their:
- Website
- Amazon: MAYON GOLD Finest Premium Handmade Dark Chocolate – 60%
- Amazon: MAYON GOLD Finest Premium Handmade Dark Chocolate – 76%
- Amazon: MAYON GOLD Finest Premium Handmade Dark Chocolate – 100%
[00:00:11] Adam: Welcome to People Helping People, the podcast for social entrepreneurs who want to build a social impact business. I'm your host, Adam Morris, and I'm honored to introduce Bob, founder of the Muravah Foundation and organization built to end poverty by providing education and job recreation, improving healthcare and strengthening the community so that there are opportunities for individuals to thrive in rural regions of the Philippines.
So let's just dive right in. Bob, welcome on the podcast.
[00:00:40] Bob: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:42] Adam: Before we dive into the history of how you got started, can you just give us a brief overview of what the Muravah Foundation does?
[00:00:49] Bob: Well, we kicked off with sponsoring kids, uh, out of slums in Manila. I was still living in Hong Kong when I started that. And, uh, then when I moved down here the parents of the kids were, were living in terrible situation. And they came from this particular rural area that I'm in now. And so they invited me out here, um, what was a couple of years later, and I saw the opportunity for increasing yields in farms and hopefully creating work.
Plus there was a whole lot else going on in the school. Only had a, about half of a roof after a typhoon. Two years previously, uh, people were hungry everywhere. There was no healthcare, we needed irrigation. So it's been quite a journey covering many aspects, all aspects of community. So that's a quick overview.
[00:01:43] Adam: How, how did you get started sponsoring somebody.
[00:01:46] Bob: Well, that was interesting. I was in Hong Kong, it was 2008, which you may remember was a bit of a downturn in the, in the world economy. Uh, we had factories in China, like we closed them down and I've got a business in Australia, which I still have, but my son runs that business. And, uh, so I was basically had an office in Hong Kong and I was, knew I was gonna run out of work and I said to a friend, I'd like to get into, start my own charity.
I've been living in China. For, uh, about 18 months. And I had, did start a charity there, a branch of a worldwide charity and enjoyed it working with university students and what have you. Kept me sane while I was up there and, uh, so, uh, that I was keen to do that. And he said, well, come and meet, uh, our Yaya, she's from the Philippines.
And, uh, listen to her story. So I did and, and she had these nieces and nephews living in poverty And they weren't getting much schooling, so I sponsored them. It wasn't a lot of money really. I sponsored them from Hong Kong without meeting them. And it was like 18 months later I came down and I moved then to the Philippines.
So that was like, yeah, 2008. So that was about two, 2010 I moved down here and uh, and that's when I got to come out to the rural areas and, and we really got kicked on from there.
[00:03:04] Adam: What does the situation look like in rural areas of, the Philippines?
[00:03:08] Bob: Well, it's pretty desperate, really. I mean, you got 19.2 million Filipinos who don't eat. Well, every day they, they're hungry all the time. A lot of them are in this area here. It was a hundred years ago though, big landholders. Then they had 10 kids. 10 kids. 10 kids. 10 kids. Now you've got a lot of families.
They've got a quarter hectare, half hectare of rice or veggie or, coconut. Trees and, um, so they're, they live in an abject poverty, so there's a lot of potential here to help a lot of people, but we can only go as far as we can go. But, sustainability was the key to, to what we're doing. And right from the get-go, when I started sponsoring those kids, I promise that, uh, I'd take them through college, through university. And um, because I knew if you just get through high school, that's not gonna get you outta poverty. The other thing, which is very important, I sponsored all the kids in one family and that's what I still do. If one child and a family will say five siblings, I guess the university or college education, that that family's never coming outta poverty cause that one child will be supporting that family.
So it's all the kids in the family need to be sponsored. And then we've got families now come outta the slums. They've got nice homes. They're, they're living a normal life. The transition for people outta poverty is quite interesting. It's a bit like, uh, you know, someone in the states wins is, do you have a lotto over there?
[00:04:41] Adam: Yeah.
[00:04:42] Bob: Yeah, some of the, and you know, they, they change character and, uh, that's a bit of a challenge too. We've gotta council people through that. They get greedy and selfish. They're previously beautiful people. And so there's a lot of challenges, uh, that, that mixed in with the whole thing we do. But that, that program, we, we continue with, we just received promise for donations for the next school year of another 5,000 a month.
Dollars that is, and, uh, that'll sponsor another 25 kids right through college. And, that's the easy part. The kids you can work with and you can get them out of poverty and, and, and get it going. But you know, all around us, there's all these other people live the dirt floors, no toilets, no running water.
[00:05:27] Adam: Oh wow.
[00:05:28] Bob: a lot of work to do for the parents, I guess.
[00:05:31] Adam: What sort of things make a difference for the parents?
[00:05:34] Bob: On the one side, when the kids get qualified, of course the parents have an income, but, for the parents, it's been really, hard road, um, because we work with the rice growers. We're doing loans and all this sort of thing to, to give them, uh, inputs, fertilizers, and that, so they get high yields.
And that was working very well. And then the federal government and their wisdom dropped all the tariffs on rice and the price prices dropped and they couldn't repay their loans. And they still just grow rice for themselves. So that we haven't been able to help the rice growers. The coconut growers, there was nothing much we could do there.
There's a very low price for coconut until we were heard. It was about seven years ago. We heard about Kakao and that kakao can be, co planted with coconut trees
[00:06:22] Adam: Hmm.
[00:06:23] Bob: and you can plant five kakao trees for one coconut tree. So this got us pretty excited. And, and I didn't know there was these trees around with these odd looking fruits hanging off them.
I didn't know they were caca. Oh no. I dunno why I didn't ask somebody. But it was, it was chocolate. It was hanging on the trees. So we had an industry here back in the 17 hundreds, 18 hundreds, uh, early 19 hundreds. A a big chocolate, big cacao industry. But it was destroyed by disease. And that was introduced by the Spanish way back.
And those trees came from South America and
[00:07:00] Adam: Oh wow.
[00:07:01] Bob: So these were the descendants of those trees growing wild everywhere. And I'm cutting a few things out here, but um, just quickly, we now propagate from those trees. And we started planting the seedlings six years ago. And of course with the promise that we'd buy all the fruit, not having any idea how to make chocolate or what we're gonna do with the fruit.
So that was a pretty exciting ride when all of a sudden the, the trees were starting to fruit, then, oh hell, what are we doing?
[00:07:31] Adam: How, how long did it take for the, the trees to start giving fruit?
[00:07:35] Bob: Four years, and we've just had a very good harvest. Now we're just coming to the end of that harvest. So we very quickly, and there's a big cacao chocolate industry down south in Philippines in devour. So we got our dick, got down there, government departments came in and helped us. We started learning as quickly as possible all about how to make chocolate.
Selling, the, uh, the beans, the wet beans or dried fermented beans, there was just no, no profit for the farmers in there. And we had to take it right through the finished product. So, we got going with that. It was 2019 where we, we were rocking along and we got invited to go to Deval for the annual, uh, Filipino, conference if you like.
And, uh, we were invited to, uh, put Our chocolate into the two competitions. Uh, a hundred percent chocolate and 70%. Well, we came first in one and second in the other, and there was that point in time with, and the whole crowd there, 600 people are looking at us like, who the hell are you? Where'd you come from? Uh, so what we've discovered, we've got the beautiful flavor in our cacao. Naturally there, obviously we did, we worked it well. It's just know chocolate is a, I'll just, I had to have a couple here to show you Mayon Gold, we called it. And, uh, it's
[00:08:58] Adam: love that.
[00:08:59] Bob: yeah, and, and we got 4 styles of chocolate right now.
We live underneath a live volcano, Mount Mayon, and, uh, just the soil, the conditions here, it's like, Grapes. If you take a burgundy and grow it there and you grow another burgundy over there, they're different flavors. Right? So right here we got this unique flavor. It's a beautiful chocolate.
So that was, thank you. Yeah.
[00:09:24] Adam: What goes into that process of making chocolate?
[00:09:28] Bob: There's a lot in it and so we needed an investment for that, but we, we've had some very, our own business in Australia is a major supporter and, but we've got other businesses in Australia have been fantastic and it regular cash flow every month is so important to charities and most charities struggle up to three years.
They give up. Because how do you get the donations coming in? Well, you know, the only way, thank God we've got our own company underpinning everything and, uh, other donations. And the Department of Agriculture helped build a building. The process is you got the pods.
I'll send you a video sometimes you like and show you what we
[00:10:07] Adam: Yeah, I'm very curious. That's how it's cool.
[00:10:09] Bob: pods. Uh, then we gotta crack them open. You get the beans out as they call 'em the seeds, they ferment for six days, then they dry for six days. Then they, you got your dried fermented beans, which most like the craft chocolaters is in the States.
They import drive fermented beans from, from the growers in South America or Mexico. But, uh, we take that then and we, um, deha it that you call it, and you end up with caco nibs. You would've seen them in packets, CACO nibs in for sale.
[00:10:39] Adam: Yeah.
[00:10:40] Bob: And then those nibs go into Melans, which we imported from the states I might add.
And then we, temper it to, so do you get their lovely, shiny, good crisp chocolate and mold it.
[00:10:51] Adam: Wow.
[00:10:52] Bob: and bang, end up with. Chocolate. So,
[00:10:56] Adam: That's cool.
[00:10:57] Bob: so we've taken it, so basically it's the farm to bar story. And profit from the chocolate is goes three ways, a third back to the farmer.
We're paying double market right rates already to the farmer.
[00:11:09] Adam: Nice.
[00:11:10] Bob: a third back into the factory, and a third for the community projects, including obviously the sponsorship of kids. So that's been an absolute godsend, this, this cacao thing because that's a sustainable solution to poverty. The income of the farmer has increased more than four times.
That's taken many of them above the poverty line. They've got extra money where they've day to day before that you imagine like these people have no hope. They just don't believe anything you tell 'em from a start. They had had to get their confidence , but now they're really coming around.
But it's taken a long time. We'll, at our team, going out round the farms all the time, talking to the farmers, helping pruning. In their defense. Coconut growers get a coconut, put it in the ground and it grows a coconut tree. You just walk away and let it go. And you know, 10, 12 years later, you got coconuts, Kakao, trees never come out of preschool.
They're in nappies all their life. For the farm, first of all, we give them the seedlings. All the seedlings died. The, the caribou came in and ate the bloody things and Oh, oh my God. So we were learning at the same, so we had to educate them, but they're, they, they're getting the money now.
So now the words spreading and it's starting to, we're getting really getting some momentum happening now.
[00:12:26] Adam: That's fascinating.
[00:12:28] Bob: We've slipped through to the, so right now our concentration. Is, is the chocolate industry because it creates work. A lot of our staff are single moms, a lot of single moms here everywhere and grandparents looking after their grandkids.
So it's creating work for those people and everyone who works for me. No, none of them ever had a full-time job, I think, ever. I mean, and for the older ones, this is just like, from heaven. This is unbelievable. They, and we do benefits, you know, health benefits and, and I've just given them all two weeks holiday each, they just dunno what to do.
They think this is what, what, what's this holiday business? So, so actually all the money that comes into us is helping everybody. It's a hundred percent help because the people working for us. Were people living in poverty, they were living in dirt floors and what have you, but we've given them education or they've had education they've never had a chance to use.
So it's not many charities can say a hundred percent of the money goes into the communities. Less, one and a half percent. We're, um, accredited by Rotary International and all the money is channeled through them. So there was tax deductions for people who make donations.
Rotary have been very supportive actually. Yeah.
[00:13:47] Adam: One thing that you've said, which I think is really fascinating is, is how you take the money. And it's not just like, oh, we're giving money to the farmers. You have a very holistic approach of like, here's the different things that we need in the community in order to build up, like you've, you've touched on the schools and the education and the infrastructure, and I'd love to just hear you go more into how we're using that money in order to increase the value of the community.
[00:14:13] Bob: Yep, yep, yep. I talk about projects we're doing now. Then I'll talk about the previous ones. We're building what we call typhoon proof . Homes.
Now these typhoon proof homes are like palaces. These people, they are two and a half meters by three meters. Concrete rooms. That's all they are with a roof. But they've been getting their homes blown away for 50 years and they just rebuild and this bare bill and tin and what have you.
So we've built oh six, maybe 70 of those now. And that's an ongoing project because it gives them somewhere in a typhoon they can get in there. It's like a bunker. They've stile got their goods. It's not all blown away. And, and we leave steel coming outta the side of two of the walls so they can tie on rooms.
They've done a good job with it too. We've had a typhoon since, uh, we started that, and the rooms haven't blown away, so, so that's an ongoing project. But before we first got here, I mean, the primary school, I went down there, this couldn't move.
There was no books, hardly any chairs and desks. The kids were on the floor, half the roof was gone. If it rained, they all had to get over in the . Corner. A lot of the kids were going to sleep in the morning. And I said, the teachers here, what? How come you're letting the kids sleep? They said, we haven't had any food for a couple of days.
It might've been a day. Oh shit. So we rebuilt the school, added rooms, put on a, kitchen, and a feeding area. And we fed the kids every day for about five years. And then in that last administration here, they actually started rebuilding schools themselves. And they took over that role, which was great.
[00:15:47] Adam: That's
[00:15:48] Bob: But, uh, that was when we started there. And then there was the, uh, the health center, which wasn't the health center. It was just a room in one chair and one table. So we built a health center, which where we could deliver babies because the road into town was very, very rough. A lot of babies getting born in tricycles on the way in.
So, so we built that health center. And so a lot of babies have been getting born there and what have you. And then we looked at the vegetable growers up in Mount May on the volcano. They needed water. And we built a big tank up there, holds about two 40 ton of water, and it's gravity fed. When it rains, it just runs down a creek.
We catch it in a small dam and then pipes down into the tank. And uh, that's do, that was like, that's 10 years ago. We built that. And that's still operates. That's, that works well. So they are the big projects. Well, there are other schools where rebuilt as well, of course. And so your question was how do we impact the parents and all that?
It's a bit hit and miss with them except for the work we create, building all these things. And if they're people who are not farmers, So, but we do provide work regularly for building, like building those little homes or expanding the factory or whatever. And really the kids who are now educated, they're setting money back to those parents.
So that impacts them. And the farmers, the coconut growers, of course, they're over the moon. But other than that, because the small land holdings, there's very little you can do. I mean, vegetable growing, here's the water. So they're growing more vegetables so they've got better incomes than what they had before.
They can grow more veggies cause there's water there up on the mountain. It's a very fertile country. But, these things have a ripple effect and the whole community looks and is a lot better off than what it was before. But I dunno how you describe it. You need to go back in time 10 years ago and look at it then and look at it now, and you go, oh hell, what happened?
[00:17:45] Adam: That's fascinating and also when we started you, you said that the parents just take a lot more educating on how to move out of poverty.
[00:17:53] Bob: Yes, it's very difficult for them. I mean, you live day to day all your life, not knowing where your next meal's coming from. And then suddenly, you've got some money left over. You dunno what a bank is. You've never been in a bank. I mean, the transition is, is very difficult for them.
I was warned about that by a congressman when I first started. I thought, oh, bullshit. What are you talking about? Of course I'll be fine. No, he was right. There's a lot of that dealing with the psychology of it. Yeah. And, you're gonna take a change.
Like our promises take people outta poverty permanently. If you're gonna do that, you gotta be here for a generation or more. And, uh, our job's far from done here. There's a lot more to do. And, the produce we got this season from the cacao was only from two and a half thousand trees. Well, I bought land years ago for nothing cause it was supposed to be worthless, but it was, and, uh, which was like two and a half hectares.
And we can actually process the produce from 50,000 trees there.
[00:18:58] Adam: Wow,
[00:18:58] Bob: We just need the money to get more trees out and have more people out there helping the farmers. So, I mean, any donations received are not wasted, I assure you that that's, there's a lot to do here.
[00:19:11] Adam: that is exciting.
[00:19:12] Bob: 50,000 trees out there around all these farmers.
Can you imagine the difference in the incomes and the, just the economy of the whole area? And it's possible it can be done. We've got another 12,000, which will be coming on fruiting over the next two years. So we're on the way. But I'd like to speed it up a bit.
[00:19:34] Adam: So 15 years, have you seen students go through college and, and graduate?
[00:19:40] Bob: Oh yeah. Yeah. Many architects, accountants, teachers, engineers, these are kids like when I, when you first met 'em, they're just running around a bare feet in slums and next thing they're an architect, and you go, wow. How did that happen? It's fantastic. Really. I mean, and of course a lot of them end up working overseas because, we don't have a lot of industry in the Philippines.
There's some crazy, foreign investment laws, which we won't go into. But, uh, 10% of the GNP gross national product is from the, Filipinos, 10 million of them working overseas.
If we could just get foreign investment here, this country could just take off. But right now it's the worst country in Asia for, uh, the difference between the rich and the poor. And as I said before, there's 19.2 million just way below the poverty line. I hung there's 50 million who don't have savings.
[00:20:35] Adam: I'm always amazed how many people I talk to . And it's normal for, you know, a parent to be working over in Hong Kong or somewhere else.
[00:20:41] Bob: Yeah, that's
[00:20:42] Adam: And just have very limited contact to be able to come back and,
[00:20:45] Bob: With their, uh, their smartphones now, of course, at least they've got that, and that's been a big boon boon for them.
[00:20:52] Adam: So how has this journey changed you?
[00:20:56] Bob: Well, it's been a great lesson, especially in the patients and, uh, Forgiveness. And, life is a lesson, isn't it? Isn't that why we're here?
[00:21:07] Adam: Yeah.
[00:21:07] Bob: I'm learning heaps of lessons. I'm really enjoying it. Really. Uh, I mean, uh, yeah, getting unconditional and non-judgmental is, is a great lesson to learn.
And when you're working in this work, you've really gotta be like that. You've really gotta change yourself and put everything else away. It is what it is. And love 'em for who they are and not what they do.
[00:21:33] Adam: Now, were you new to farming when you started this?
[00:21:35] Bob: I couldn't keep a pop cleared alive. It was so, it was so bloody ridiculous.
I've come here and I'm telling rice growers how to grow their rice. They've been doing it the same way for under a years. Said, no, no, you don't do a lot of that. This is what we're gonna do. I used to laugh at myself. Oh, this is, this is crazy. But, uh, no, no, I was never a farmer. I mean, I loved cattle when I was young and ride horses and chase cows, but, uh, no, growing crops wasn't my thing.
But I gotta tell you, this cacao industry is a lot of fun. And it was, the US guys, um, was 2005, has started the craft chocolate industry. Which is a new way of chocolate. And, and that's taking, the flavors of different regions and, not overtreating them. You know, like the dead Deloitte in San Francisco do two ingredients.
I'd never heard of this industry, but I decided with the team, I said, we're just gonna do two ingredients. We're gonna do pure cacao sugar, and we use coconut or organic coconut sugar. And bugger me. It was 12 months later, I was on the internet. I thought, what's this? It was called the Craft Chocolate Industry, which has started back in 2005.
It was now quite a very big part of the chocolate industry. So we're in it by accident. We're here.
[00:22:51] Adam: I love it. Oh, that's
[00:22:52] Bob: by the way, our chocolate has gone to Amazon. Thanks to the Department of Trade and Industry. We'll be available on Amazon in the States in the next couple of months. Mayon
[00:23:02] Adam: How do, how do people find you
[00:23:04] Bob: They just look for Mayon Gold. Can you see the logo there? Mayon
[00:23:09] Adam: Yeah, I love that Mayon Gold, M A Y O
[00:23:12] Bob: Mount Mayon's a volcano and yeah, I dunno where I got the gold from, but anyway, Mayon Gold it is. So you'd Google that and you'd see it there on their website. It's not there yet. It's going through all the red tape, in the States.
It's in the states. That would be a great support. If we can get sales in the States, that'll be fantastic for us.
[00:23:32] Adam: And if people wanted to support, the charity, how else could they do
[00:23:35] Bob: well, if you go to www.muravahfoundation.com and, uh, that's M U R A V A H Foundation. Can you understand my as? Not doesn't sound like E, they reckon Aussie accent.
I made a speech in the States when I was in business and, uh, No one was laughing at what I was saying. It was later that one of the, one of the American US guys said, mate, no one could understand you. I was just talking too fast. I was down south.
And you can go there and you donate through International Rotary.
And so that would work in the states as well. Uh, you'd get a tax deduction, and that's pretty important for businesses. And if people wanna send, uh, like to build one of those bunker typhoon bunker homes, it's 1000 US dollars
[00:24:22] Adam: that's it.
[00:24:23] Bob: that's it. And for, for the next 50 years, 50 bloody years, that family is set for a thousand US dollars,
eh, goods that you know,
[00:24:34] Adam: that's a good return on investment.
[00:24:35] Bob: It really is. It really is. So that's why that program, we've only just kicked off with it a massive typhoon year. When was that? Oh, it must be two years ago now. So we kicked that program off then. But, people can say, here's a thousand dollars. Build a home. We'll build a home, we'll send you photos of the family, and the home when it's built and all that sort of thing.
Obviously people like to see what they're doing, and that's an easy reward way to show the reward to invest in the cacao industry, buy our chocolate, or send us money and say, I'd like this, to produce 5,000 seedlings. Okay, let's do that. Talk to us, through the website and we'll, we can chat about, what people can do.
Regular donations, it was a hundred dollars or something like a month. A really good, if someone says to us, here's a hundred dollars a month for the next five years, we put that in our cash flow and our planning. Like any business, you've really gotta project out. I've just written a paper for the government boys.
They want to do a, a, what they call a roadmap for the cacao industry, and they had one which went for three years. So I've written one for 20 years, totally different to theirs. So we present that next week and hopefully they take it on board, you've really . Gotta look out, and dream and make it happen.
[00:25:53] Adam: I imagine too, as you see, the village building up and you see, hey, here's what this is gonna need in the future in order to keep people here
[00:26:01] Bob: Yeah.
[00:26:01] Adam: and, and not just educate people so they can go overseas, but make it so that they're self-sufficient.
[00:26:06] Bob: Really nice to have them back. Yeah. Our, uh, operations manager is one of our students who qualified through college, must be five, six years ago now. And, she's come on very, very well.
The younger ones we've gotten through college. I want more than them to come into the business as we grow it because they've really got a totally different attitude. You know, nothing like some education. Not that I had much of it, but back in the day. But it really does make a difference for these kids
[00:26:36] Adam: Well too, and if they understand that transition as well from their own experience of growing up in poverty and then understanding, hey, here's what's possible, and here's what's the flip side.
[00:26:45] Bob: Yeah. And they have the heart, they have the compassion for, for the people around them and. I don't think any of 'em are really saving too much money. They're too busy. I mean, there's, there's not a lot of healthcare here and, you know, someone's sick. What do you do?
So that, we're doing that all the time as well.
There's always money going out, or a bag of rice or something , so we do a lot of little things as well as stuff I'm talking about. It's a whole community commitment.
[00:27:13] Adam: That's fantastic. Well, I love this journey that we've covered. Just starting off from, sponsoring a child and turning into a family and turning into a village
[00:27:22] Bob: I was seeing that I was going into . Semi-retirement, but, that didn't last long.
[00:27:26] Adam: that didn't last
[00:27:27] Bob: But, ah, look, business, I've always loved business. I've been in business all my life and. I only had two hobbies, business and drinking. And as I got older, I had to give the drinking away. So, uh, so business was it. And this is, this
[00:27:40] Adam: you've got a crutch to fall back on.
[00:27:43] Bob: So running this charity is great. It's great fun and I love the challenges that
[00:27:48] Adam: How do you keep the chocolate from melting?
[00:27:50] Bob: It's really good. It, it does not melt unless it's indirect sunlight.
[00:27:55] Adam: Okay.
[00:27:56] Bob: It's a pure chocolate. As soon as you got in your mouth, it'll melt.
Chocolate's an amazing product. Oh, I could rave on about chocolate. but it'll melts, but it won't melt while it's just sitting here. I mean, it's ob average 30 degrees here. This chocolate never melts from 30 degrees, but it's inside. And, uh, a lot of our chocolate is used for hot chocolate. And, uh, like the local air, our airport here, they're selling hot chocolate for our chocolate, uh, baking.
Tom Parrado is very famous here. It isn't came from Mexico, the idea, but it's rice with chocolate. And so a lot of our chocolate goes that way. And yeah, if you wanna learn about chocolate, go to craft chocolate tv. What's his name? I forget his name, but he's, he's from Hawaii, Manoa Chocolate.
He's done about a hundred odd videos on chocolate. He's been a huge help to us, to be honest. If he ever watches, if he ever does, thank you. Can't remember your name. Sorry about that. But thanks for your tips. It's been great. What he does, craft chocolate industry is really exciting. A lot of characters in it and there's a lot of new flavors and it's good fun.
[00:29:03] Adam: That's gotta be some great pride for the farmers as well.
[00:29:06] Bob: Gonna go go for some international awards and already some Filipino chocolate tea is a won international awards and we know how chocolate's better than theirs, sorry. And uh, so we're getting it stuck into that next year.
So once we do that, we can really ramp up our. Our sales and, uh, they're quite healthy right now. They could, they, they could be better. And, uh, and we'll get into some export because we'll have a lot more trees coming on. A lot more chocolate. Which means a lot more profit, which means more and more morava foundation, but will become in 10 or 15 years self-sustainable and it will continue to operate as a foundation.
[00:29:48] Adam: I love it. That's fantastic.
Well thank you so much for, for coming on and sharing your story.
[00:29:54] Bob: thanks Adam. Adam.
[00:29:55] Adam: And if you're listening, go and visit, uh, Muravah Foundation. That's M U R A V A H, or go on Amazon and see if you can buy some, Mayon Gold, m a y o n, gold chocolate.
[00:30:08] Bob: That, that's it.
[00:30:10] Adam: I'll keep those links in the show notes so you can find 'em easily.
[00:30:13] Bob: If you, if you don't mind, Adam, that'll be great. Yeah. I'm not sure when it's gonna be launched, but surely in the next month or so,
[00:30:20] Adam: Well, I'm sure you'll let me know when, when it's up and, I'll keep that posted.
[00:30:24] Bob: Okay,
[00:30:25] Adam: much.
[00:30:26] Bob: thank you so much. Thank you very much for the opportunity to chat.
