About the Founders

David Robinson was born in 1952 to two extraordinary parents, Jackie Robinson who integrated major league baseball and his wife and partner Rachel. David first saw Africa's beauty and potential at age 14 during travels on the continent with his mother. By age 19 after solo travel through 8 African countries including Tanzania, David was committed to a life in Africa for the purpose of enhancing Africa's global integration and the human development he believed would follow.

The first stage of the Sweet Unity Farms dream became a reality in 1989 when David Robinson was given 280 acres of forest land by the Bara village government in the coffee growing Mbeya region of Tanzania. The name Sweet Unity came from the emotion felt at the sight of 5 different tribes engaged in the single task of turning forest into a farm. Unity grew in 1994 as Robinson and family established a cooperative including 47 neighboring farms and continued to grow annually until the cooperative reached 450 members in 2006.

In 2007, Sweet Unity Farms will bring its green coffee beans to market for the fourteenth consecutive year and unity has a global face with a branded gourmet coffee product.

Pernessa Seele is the Founder & CEO of the Balm In Gilead, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to improve the health status of people of the African Diaspora by building the capacity of faith communities to address life-threatening diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. For the past 18 years, the Balm In Gilead has provided training and technical support to over 20,000 African American congregations who are now engaged in various ways in addressing HIV/AIDS, as well as other life threatening diseases within their communities;

Located in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the Balm In Gilead's Africa office is working through Catholic, Protestant and Muslim communities to bring treatment, care and support to thousands of orphans, families and people affected by the horrendous AIDS epidemic throughout the country.

The Balm In Gilead supports a community-driven approach to public health initiatives which promotes ownership and sustainability of programs in African American and African communities.