Monday, December 22, 2008

Coffee Kids Visits Supporters in EU/UK

In November, Coffee Kids Executive Director Carolyn Fairman took advantage of Coffee Kids’ appearance at the Trieste Espresso show in Trieste, Italy, to visit a number of Coffee Kids’ supporters throughout the EU and the UK.

It was an extremely busy trip as Fairman first met with our friends at the Java Republic in Ireland. She gave a presentation to employees, vendors and friends of the company at their new roastery in Dublin.

The meeting had an athletic bent as Alan Leckey, owner of Real Roast Coffee and a Java Republic distributor, presented Fairman with a check for the funds he collected on his trek up Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska. Bart Glover and his amazing Coffee Kids Cycling Team also presented Fairman with an oversized check from their fundraising ride through the French Alps.

In Glasgow, Scotland, Membership and Development Manager Heather Ferraro and Fairman met with Ewan Reid and Pamela Stewart of Matthew Algie. This amazing group has persevered following the loss of Managing Director David Williamson who passed away this past spring. David was a strong Coffee Kids supporter and Matthew Algie continues his commitment.

Ferraro and Fairman met with Lord Innes Catto, Mike Segal, Rob Stephen in London for Coffee Kids UK annual board meeting.

The Espresso Expo in Trieste, Italy, showcased many aspects of the Italian and international coffee trade, especially espresso machines. Special thanks go to Fiera Trieste for providing Coffee Kids with display space in the expo hall. Coffee Kids staff met with C.M.A. and other great supporters in Italy.

We’d also like to thank Peter Kirton with Esquires; Jeremy Knight and Heather Lawrence with Red Cup; Tim Lively and Nick Higginson with Shakespeare Coffee Company, and Helen Ostle with Beyond the Bean for their continuing support and for meeting with us during our trip.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Helping Others Has Even More Benefits

I just wanted to throw this story out there. As if helping others wasn’t good enough on its own merits, there’s this (Helping Others Makes You Hot!) too.

Thanks to Janice for the tip!

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Voice from the Field: Pedro Osorio

While visiting our partner CAMPO in Oaxaca, Mexico, I ran into Pedro Osorio. We’d met the previous year when Coffee Kids staff visited the community of Santa Cruz Tepetotutla. The community is located on the side of a mountain in the Chinantla Alta, an area rich in biodiversity with expansive forests, clean water and the perfect altitude for quality coffee. CAMPO has been working with the community for a number of years, but now local committees are taking charge of development in the town.

Pedro Osorio is on the natural resources committee representing six communities in the region working together to protect the area.

“We are currently trying to promote eco-tourism. We built a community hostel for up to 20 people. The idea of this project is for people to see what we do on a daily basis. Some services we offer are tours to visit some of the rare forests, and they are very interesting with waterfalls and springs that you can visit.

“A lot of our children are emigrating to the cities and other countries and we decided not to just sit and cry, but think what can we do to confront this situation. So we are looking for ways to give more opportunity to our children. And we realized the importance of our culture and conservation. For us the principal theme is conservation, that you don’t contaminate your water, don’t degrade the habitat. If you destroy that, you destroy yourself. And there’s a lot of work to be done, but it doesn’t end there, there’s a lot to do.

“The organization CAMPO was the piece that helped us focus our efforts. They gave us the ideas and supported our efforts. They helped us when we first formed a cooperative. And we had problems and failure, but we never stopped. We built a school, there were problems, but we learned and we passed that onto others. A few years back, they’ve let us move on our own, and now we have realized we can do it on our own and CAMPO has moved onto help other communities.

“They perfectly understand the communities, the dynamics. To realize the changes we need, you need to understand, and they really put it together.

“Whenever you want, you should come to visit us in Tepetotutla”