Coffee Helps Kids Get an Education

People here in the office will tell you that I am a coffee nut.  The weekend of April 17, I had the opportunity to fly to Atlanta, Georgia and attend the Specialty Coffee Association of American's annual exposition.  My family operates an online store selling green coffee beans to home roasters (www.coffeebeancorral.com) and I do the web site maintenance for the store.  I was excited to attend the Expo for th first time.

Every type of coffee product imaginable was represented at the Expo's trade show.  It was a coffee lover's paradise.  While walking the trade show, I was surprised at the number of non-profit organizations represented at the Expo.  One of the non-profit organizations that I most enjoyed learning about is called Coffee Kids.  Coffee Kids works with coffee farming families to develop partnerships with local organizations to provide the families with opportunities for education, health care, business opportunities and community involvement.  Since I work in education and have an elementary aged child, I was particularly curious about their work in education. 

Coffee Kids works with four different organizations to provide education to coffee farming communities. In many of these communities school aged children have no option for formal education.  It is amazing to me that some children cannot get formal education. This last summer, my wife and did not worry IF our child was going to get education, but WHICH school would he attend.  We had options of traditional public schools, charter schools, online schools, private schools and home schooling.  The work that Coffee Kids is doing in Central and South America is valuable, because it givens the children in coffee farming communities at least one option to receive an education.

I learned that there are a number of ways to support Coffee Kids. The simplest is find and support coffee shops that support Coffee Kids.  The Coffee Kids web site provides a search tool to find these shops.  There are five in Arizona.  I look forward to visiting these shops in the very near future. 

One of the fascinating things about coffee is the number of people it touches on the way to our coffee mugs.  I hope that when you drink your next cup, you will take a moment to reflect on the process and the people involved in harvesting the coffee. Thankfully there are organizations like Coffee Kids who can help us coffee drinkers make a difference in the lives of farming communities around the world.

For a detailed report of my experiences at the SCAA Expo, see my blog and my page on Flickr.