upworthy

social impact

Badge
Pura
Pura Fragrances
Justice

Walking Alongside Martu: A journey with one of the world’s oldest living cultures

Pura’s inaugural impact collection honors both sacred traditions and sustainable futures.

James Roh
True

In a world driven by speed, efficiency, and immediate results, it’s easy to forget that lasting change is built on trust. Real impact doesn’t come from rushing toward an end goal or measuring success through lofty metrics. It comes from falling in love with the problem, building a community around it, and sharing a vision for lasting transformation.

Pura, the smart home fragrance company that marries premium fragrance with innovative technology, recently launched its inaugural impact collection with K Farmer Dutjahn Foundation (KFDF) and Dutjahn Sandalwood Oils (DSO). The Pura x Dutjahn partnership began with a clear purpose: to source a sacred ingredient directly from its origin while honoring the land and the people who’ve cared for it. Our goal wasn’t simply to find sandalwood — it was to find a community and an ingredient that embody exceptional land stewardship, ethical harvesting, and transformative, community-led impact. After careful research and over three years of development, we saw an opportunity to secure a premium, luxurious ingredient while supporting a regenerative supply chain that invests in Indigenous-led education, economic opportunity, and land stewardship.

James Roh

Over the past several years, we’ve walked alongside Martu, an Indigenous tribe from the vast Western Australian desert. Martu are one of the oldest living cultures in the world, with a history spanning 60,000 years. As nomadic hunter-gatherers, they have unparalleled ecological knowledge, passed down through generations, making them the traditional custodians of the land. Their approach to sandalwood harvesting isn’t driven by market demand but by a deep respect for seasonal rhythms, land health, and cultural law. Their work adapts to the environment—whether it’s “sorry time,” when mourning pauses activities, or the harsh desert conditions that make travel and communication difficult. Martu operate on Martu time, a deliberate rhythm shaped by millennia of experience, far removed from the rapid-swipe, hyper-productive pace of Western systems.

Martu’s ecological knowledge isn’t documented in baseline reports. It’s lived, carried in stories, and practiced with rigor and respect for the changing needs of the ecosystems. True partnership means unlearning the typical approach. It means standing beside—not in front—and recognizing that the wisdom and leadership we need already exist within these communities. Our role isn’t to define the work, but to support it, protect it, and learn from it.

James Roh

Tonight, as I spoke with Chairman Clinton Farmer and the KFDF team about our focus for this piece, I learned that Clinton’s truck had broken down (again), leaving him to “limp” back to town from the desert at low speeds for hours and hours. He had been awake since 3:00 a.m. This is a common and costly setback, one that disrupts the harvest, demands days of driving, and brings real financial and emotional strain. These barriers are relentless and persistent, part of the harsh reality Clinton and his community face daily. It's easy for outsiders, detached from the reality on the ground, to impose rules, regulations, and demands from afar. Rather than continuing to impose, we need to truly partner with communities — equipping them with the resources to operate sustainably, avoid burnout, and protect the very land they love and care for. All while they endeavor to share these incredible, sacred ingredients with the world and build an economic engine for their people.

There is much to learn, but we are here to listen, adapt, and stay the course. The future we need will not be built in quarterly cycles. It will be built in trust, over time, together.

To learn more about the partnership and fragrances, visit Pura x Dutjahn.

Related Articles Around the Web
indigenous people
Badge
Gorongosa Coffee
Gorongosa Coffee

Coffee company funding girls’ education in Mozambique one bag at a time

Brett Kuxhausen
True
Gorongosa Coffee

When it comes to education, females are still at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts. Sixteen million girls around the world will never set foot in a classroom, and women account for two-thirds of the 750 million adults without basic literacy skills, according to UNESCO.

This gender inequality is also a major cause and effect of poverty and hunger, with women and girls making up an estimated 60% of chronically hungry people, statistics from U.N. Women reveal.

Girls' education is a crucial component of decreasing the gender gap; every additional year of primary school a girl attends will increase her eventual wages by 10 to 20% and encourage her to marry later and have fewer children, leaving her less vulnerable to violence and poverty.

While there are many ways in which we can contribute to the efforts of those working to ensure girls get the education they deserve, one company has made it as simple as buying a bag of coffee.

In 2015, the Gorongosa Project partnered with green bean coffee experts and local farmers to plant coffee on Mount Gorongosa in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. The shade-grown coffee is planted alongside native tree saplings to restore the depleted rainforest and provide farmers with a sustainable source of income.

Brett Kuxhausen

From this, Gorongosa Coffee was born. The company, founded by Gorongosa National Park, directly supports the activities of the Gorongosa Project, with every purchase of its products aiding human development and conservation activities in the area.

The beans are harvested by small-scale producers in Mozambique and then roasted into three different blends by partners around the world. Each blend serves a specific impact area, including wildlife conservation, rainforest reforestation, and girls' education.

One hundred percent of the profits from the Girls Run the World blend help to build 100 schools, give 20,000 girls access to after-school programs, and provide 500 high school scholarships. Even the purchase of just one bag equals one day in school for a girl.

"Our main aim is to keep girls in school, because for many reasons, as soon as girls are old enough…12 or 13, they normally are sent to get married," Larissa Sousa, the girls education program manager at Gorongosa National Park, said.

One way the park does this is through its Girls' Club, a program that works to prevent premature marriages and keep girls in school so they have access to more resources and can become self-reliant.

"We want to work with the most vulnerable…in the community to give opportunity to these children. So what we want is to try to have this generation of women who have the opportunity to continue education, who can grow and be what they want to be, who have better opportunities than the previous generation had," Sousa said.

Brett Kuxhausen

Sousa explains the program works to inform both the girls and their parents of the importance of getting an education and how that will have a big impact on their future.

"What we are doing is for these girls to try to create safe spaces, open doors to the opportunities that they can have, and also create that sense of thinking about the future that what you do today will have an action, a reaction in the future, that everything we do has a consequence," she said.

The results of the work Sousa and Girls' Club are doing is already evident.

"We've known the girls for some time now, so now we can see that they are already more confident. They want to know more about the world," Sousa said.

"In the beginning, you would greet the girls and they would run away. They're open now to opportunities. They want to know more of life…they're curious. It's very interesting how some of the girls already come and say, oh I want to be a doctor, I want to be this, because now they see this is possible so that's what makes us work harder every day," she said.

Anora Manuel, 13, is one such example. Manuel participates in Girls' Club after school and says she wants to be a ranger when she grows up.

"I live with my father and grandfather. I don't have a mother. I'm a child and I want to study. I don't want to get married," Manuel said.

To help Girls' Club continue this important work, all you have to do is swap your current coffee for Gorongosa Coffee's Girls Run the World blend and know that with every sip, you're helping close the gender gap and giving a girl the opportunity to dream bigger for her life.

Put simply, "educating a woman is educating a society," according to Sousa.

From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Trending Stories