Vignettes on Returning IV
>> September 14, 2010
This morning at breakfast, we drank coffee imported from Nicaragua. We want to promote fair-trade and community self-sufficiency through relations between the USA and abroad. A friend of a cousin’s of Brittany offers her own branding and message to us through her coffee. She has a virtual coffee import business - ‘Café Congo’ working with a group in Nicaragua named Brothers and Sisters in Reconciliation.
Café Congo uses first-hand knowledge of producer/consumer behavior to promote global initiatives locally. Profits raised by Café Congo’s grassroots efforts develop into ongoing projects for local villages in Nicaragua. These sustainable eco-friendly projects convert manures to natural gases, build grey water systems, install compost toilets, and distribute water filtration systems to shade grown organic crops.
These grassroots projects contribute to growth of organic farming, restoration of biodiversity, fight poverty, restore the cultural and environmental region, and prevent global warming. Through the purchase of her coffee, “you are reconciling [the farmers] goals with your own; your world with theirs.”
The use of coffee trade as a tool for building cultural, social, and economic resiliency is one which we seek to promote and teach. It is but one example of many.
The farmers of Hermanos y Hermanas para la reconciliation - or Brothers and Sisters for the Reconciliation is a new example we like. They are a very small rural cooperative associated with the larger Compas de Nicaragua (www.compas1.org). These rural farmers are working to broaden local goals and unite them with larger communities. They seek, “to reconcile polarized political ideologies, a turbulent history, and Nicaragua’s environment, health, and national quality of life.”
Organizations like Café Congo often come about locally just as relationships. Sometimes Britt and I use this type of micro-enterprise initiative by buying larger than needed organic coffee, in Minca, Colombia near our hotels in Santa Marta and Taganga. We support local organic growers union by purchasing extra coffee from them directly instead of through second party distributors. We then transport coffee to the USA.
Café Congo uses first-hand knowledge of producer/consumer behavior to promote global initiatives locally. Profits raised by Café Congo’s grassroots efforts develop into ongoing projects for local villages in Nicaragua. These sustainable eco-friendly projects convert manures to natural gases, build grey water systems, install compost toilets, and distribute water filtration systems to shade grown organic crops.
These grassroots projects contribute to growth of organic farming, restoration of biodiversity, fight poverty, restore the cultural and environmental region, and prevent global warming. Through the purchase of her coffee, “you are reconciling [the farmers] goals with your own; your world with theirs.”
The use of coffee trade as a tool for building cultural, social, and economic resiliency is one which we seek to promote and teach. It is but one example of many.
The farmers of Hermanos y Hermanas para la reconciliation - or Brothers and Sisters for the Reconciliation is a new example we like. They are a very small rural cooperative associated with the larger Compas de Nicaragua (www.compas1.org). These rural farmers are working to broaden local goals and unite them with larger communities. They seek, “to reconcile polarized political ideologies, a turbulent history, and Nicaragua’s environment, health, and national quality of life.”
Organizations like Café Congo often come about locally just as relationships. Sometimes Britt and I use this type of micro-enterprise initiative by buying larger than needed organic coffee, in Minca, Colombia near our hotels in Santa Marta and Taganga. We support local organic growers union by purchasing extra coffee from them directly instead of through second party distributors. We then transport coffee to the USA.
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