Carlos Murrillo is the president and founder of Expocert and worked with Bill Fishbein and Coffee Kids to create the scholarship program Fundacion Hijos del Campo in Costa Rica in 1995. In this entry, he talks about working with Bill Fishbein and Coffee Kids to develop the foundation that has provided thousands of Costa Rican students with educational support and hope for a brighter future.
“We first spoke to Bill Fishbein in 1993 and we discussed rural development, corporate responsibility in the coffee industry and the coffee-growing regions.
“It resulted in us inviting Bill and Coffee Kids to Costa Rica. It was in a meeting with Bill that we institutionalized the scholarship program Fundacion Hijos del Campo (FHC). Before that it was just a program funded by outside groups, but with Bill’s suggestion and Coffee Kids help it became something more formal with a bigger budget and strong programs.
“Bill is someone you can dream with, but he’s also someone you can work with to make those dreams come true.”
Coffee Kids was delighted to be able to present at the keynote address at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) Conference and Exhibition.
In honor of our 20th Anniversary, Coffee Kids would like to thank all of our members, partners and sponsors throughout the world who have helped make it possible. We recently completed this video with the help of Machine Hero, a Providence, R.I.-based firm. It features images from our partners in Latin America and interviews with a number of our long term supporters and friends. The video explores Coffee Kids effect in the global coffee community and how support for Coffee Kids translates to support for the long term future of the specialty coffee industry.
Please leave comments on the video below and thanks for making our first two decades rewarding and fruitful!
If you are attending the SCAA Conference in Minneapolis, be sure to visit us at our booth #1241 and learn how your contributions are making a difference and if you can’t make the conference, check out our Web site to learn more about our work.
In this entry, David Abedon, co-founder of Coffee Kids, chronicles the genesis of the organization when he helped Bill Fishbein plan his trip to Guatemala to visit coffee-farming families in the late ‘80s. Abedon is a professor in the Natural Resources Science Department in the College of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. He currently serves on Coffee Kids board of directors.
“In the 80s I applied for a sabbatical leave from URI and stayed at Brown University in the School for Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.
“In order to get to Brown, I would walk from my house through Wickendon Street to the east side of Providence to Brown. I would stop at Bill’s store, the Coffee Exchange, for some muffins on my way to work and on my way back and that’s when we started to discuss coffee and poverty.
“So when Bill told me he was going down to Guatemala, I said, ‘What are you going to do when you get there? Who are you going to see?’ And Bill said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I just have to go.’
“So we looked at the schedule and started to set things up.
“I called up Partners for the Americas and Bill and I figured out a way for him to visit some of these coffee regions and so he came back and said, ‘We gotta’ do something.’
“I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, what?’
“Sometime along when we were starting to figure things out and we’d started to do some fundraisers, I invited Dean Cycon and he and Bill hit it off and Coffee Kids mushroomed from there.”
Dan Cox was one of the first members of Coffee Kids’ Advisory Board in the late ‘80s when he was working for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. He is now the founder and owner of Coffee Enterprises.
In this entry for our 20th Anniversary, he chronicles his first meeting with Bill Fishbein, founder of Coffee Kids.
“I read the smallest of small articles on Bill and I can’t remember what magazine it was in. This thing was probably 1×1.5 inches and it was really nothing more than this guy who was trying to help coffee farmers.
“I thought this is kind of interesting, a little retailer who wants to do something international and he’s making something happen on his own.
“So I called Bill up and I said, ‘Hey are you the real deal and he said, ‘Well, I’m trying.’ So I said, ‘I’m doing a lot of business in Boston would you wanna meet?’
“We met a the Harvard bookstore, literally two strangers joined by a common love of good coffee and we just sat down and I asked, ‘What are you trying to do?’
“And he basically said he wasn’t sure, but he had to do something, because the plight is so real that doing nothing would be a sin of omission.
“I thought that was interesting and even though I’d traveled to coffee-producing countries, they were mostly glamour trips with big groups of people where you’re only seeing the best of a producing country and you’re somewhat sheltered from seeing the daily travails of coffee producers.
“You go to really nice plantations. You stay in nice hotels. You drive around in nice air-conditioned buses and that’s the whole thing about those trips at the time. You’re going to the producing world in a first rate fashion.
“So bill had seen something that I hadn’t seen, he went out and he stayed on the farms and he went off the beaten track where there were open latrines where people were paid just enough to feed themselves for that day. It was that kind of stuff that just wrenched his heart.”
All of us at Coffee Kids would like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family, friends and co-workers of David Williamson, managing director of Matthew Algie and dedicated Coffee Kid supporter, who passed away last week.
Williamson, a sixth-generation descendant of the founder of the 144-year-old coffee importer and roaster in Glasgow, was dedicated to Coffee Kids’ mission and a firm believer in helping create a more sustainable lifestyle for coffee-farming families.
Williamson was not only a supporter, but also a close friend and will be sorely missed by all at Coffee Kids.
Ever traveled with a pack of Irishmen? Lucky for me I can say that I have. And it was the gift of a lifetime. I traveled to Nicaragua with representatives and affiliates of our long time supporter in Ireland, Java Republic. While it’s always an adventure and an eye opening experience when our supporters visit Coffee Kids project participants, this was truly an extraordinary journey.
I don’t know that I have ever seen such an extraordinary spirit of generosity, compassion, adventure, fun and learning. I myself learned about the Irish and their history and just what incredible people they are. There were people from each region of Ireland, including Northern Ireland. Because of the history of poverty and violence that Ireland has experienced and because they were able to overcome that history largely due to education, these travelers felt a sense of solidarity with the Nicaraguan people. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti. Nicaragua has experienced a long history of civil strife, corruption, and poverty. Perhaps it was this ability to identify with this shared history and to see the hope for the future that lead to such exceptional generosity on behalf of these Irish travelers. But I don’t think so. I think they are just highly compassionate people.
I watched as 17 people made a concrete difference in the tiny community of Aguas Amarillas by supporting the students struggling to continue their education and learn new technologies to bring them into the future. Perhaps the most moving gesture, at least to me, was that each one of these people brought back the knowledge that they can make a difference— not just by being associated with Java Republic, but through their own personal commitments to support Coffee Kids and generate more support for the town of Aguas Amarillas and so many like it throughout Latin America.
I have never been so proud to represent Coffee Kids internationally and of the work that we do. I can’t thank them enough for all that they taught me about the impact an individual can have on the lives of others. They each touched many lives, not least of all my own.
Check out pictures from the trip at Coffee Kids Flickr site or you can visit this site and see photos of the trip from our friend Patrick Jordan who was one of the visitors with the Java Republic.
Mark Prince of CoffeeGeek.com, one of the most thorough chroniclers of the coffee world on the Web, is doing a month-long fundraiser for Coffee Kids, Jan. 21- Feb. 22.
Check out www.coffeegeek.com and visit the Coffee Kids link on the left. CoffeeGeek.com is auctioning off several coffee grinders donated by Baratza; donating 25% of their ad revenue for February; donating their Amazon affiliate revenue until the end of Feb; and matching any direct donations made to Coffee Kids through CoffeeGeek.
Koka Coffee Lounge in Cincinatti, Ohio, hosted a silent auction on Dec. 9 in memory of Matt Maxin, a University of Cincinatti graduate who was tragically killed in a car accident in June 2007.
Maxin was the boyfriend of Koka Coffee Lounge employee Mandy Kordal and had worked at a coffee house in his hometown. Coffee Kids was his favorite charity.
Maxin’s friends organized a silent auction of 36 of his photographs as well as other students’ donated artwork to benefit Coffee Kids. The auction raised over $1,200.
Coffee Kids is deeply honored to be the beneficiary of this special event and the Coffee Kids staff extend their sympathy and condolences to Matt’s family and friends.
“We first spoke to Bill Fishbein in 1993 and we discussed rural development, corporate responsibility in the coffee industry and the coffee-growing regions.
“In the 80s I applied for a sabbatical leave from URI and stayed at Brown University in the School for Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.
“I thought this is kind of interesting, a little retailer who wants to do something international and he’s making something happen on his own. 
Check out 
in June 2007. 
Maxin’s friends organized a silent auction of 36 of his photographs as well as other students’ donated artwork to benefit Coffee Kids. The auction raised over $1,200.