Just Coffee Cooperative

BUILD is proud to announce "No Alcanza: Voices from Guatemala's Enduring Search for Peace," an international forum which will be held February 4-6, 2010, at Tufts University. 

Our hearts go out to the people of Haiti in the great time of need/tradgety/rebuilding.   I have been trying to figure out something to post on our webstite for a week now. 

I don't know what to say.  When I think of Haiti and the beautiful people and friends I made there, my eyes well up with tears and I feel helpless.   Fortunately there are organizations and people out there well-equipt for responding to disasters such as these.  Right now we would suggest if you would like to send donations, send them to the Cooperative Development Foundation.  CDF is designating all monies that they recieve through the first half of this year to long-term rebuiding for Haitian Co-ops.  This is made possible by their Co-op Emergency Fund.

The Haiti Project is getting together a container to ship to Haiti in March.   They are looking for donations of gardening tools (spades, rakes, pick axes, hoses, rotary cultivators, gardening gloves, etc.), non-hybrid seeds, solar lights, and AA batteries, among other things.  If you would like to donate please contact me and I will coordinate your donation with the Haiti Project. 

We would like to do something as a Co-op: a fundraiser, party or something, but don't really know what right now.  If anyone has ideas, please comment here; lets get together and work cooperatively to help in a big way. 

Check out this Time magazine article on the Mondragon Cooperative in the Basque country of Spain. They are a larger co-op of smaller worker cooperatives and they have been around forever and been super successful. They did a total of, like, eleventy-seven billion dollars of sales last year. More and more often worker cooperatives are being pointed to in the mainstream business media as successful and profitable models for new businesses. While CEOs toil to understand why "their" workers seem to be uninvested and discontented, worker co-ops show that businesses owned and operated by the same folks have the potential to solve many problems posed by more "traditional" ownership structures. Don't just take our word for it, read it for yourself.

Last August Just Coffee raised a whopping $1660.00usd at the Producer2Producer (P2P) Fundraiser. Combined with money raised at a previous presentation held at Java Cat, Just Coffee has now managed to save a total of $1835.00usd for the P2P fund!

The P2P fund will go to send someone from LaFEM cooperative on a Just Coffee Delegation to meet another group of Central American or Caribbean coffee growers that Just Coffee also purchases coffee from. The trip will serve as an educational and skills exchange and is something that LaFEM has been wanting to do since the initiation of their relationship with Just Coffee. You should know by now, but in case you don't, LaFEM is an all-womens coffee growing cooperative and women’s advocacy group, located in and near Estell, Nicaragua. Just Coffee is very happy to soon be able to finally make this dream a reality.

Because of the great success of the P2P Fundraisers, and the support of Just Coffee's customers and friends, Just Coffee raised enough money to be able to not only send someone from LaFEM to visit another group of coffee producers, but also to send someone from the cooperative that LaFEM visits on a Just Coffee Delegation to visit LaFEM. A real exchange indeed! The lives of coffee growers are not easy and an exchange such as this, or travel of any kind at all for that matter, is not common in their lives. Just Coffee hopes foster a great educational opportunity for these growers as well as continue to build and strengthen our relationships with these growers and their relationships with each other.

  (Just Coffee friends Ambra & Corey Hart who helped with organization, advertising, and execution of the P2P Fundraiser. Ambra was an excellent mc and Corey Hart played a sample of his fantastic music. Corey is local to Madison so definitely check out his music!)

Early in December (09) I traveled to the Dominican Republic to visit coffee farmers whose coffee we roast, to get to know their cooperatives and learn about coffee from the Dominican Republic.
The trip was part of USAID's 'farmer to farmer' program, though in this case 'roaster to farmer' is more appropriate.
Also on the trip were other roaster members of Cooperative Coffees, Craig Hall from Equator Coffee in Ottawa, Ontario and Dan Bailey and Jeremey Claeys from Amavida Coffee in Seaside, Florida.
We were hosted in the Dominican Republic by FEDECARES (Feceracion de Caficultores de la Region Sur [Federation of coffee growers in the southern region]) which is an 'umbrella cooperative'  that facilitates export and quality control of coffee and development of the grower cooperatives.  FEDECARES was represented by the energetic and able Marie Isabel who has been working in coffee and fair trade in the Dominican Republic for years and knows the regions and farmers very well.

Jill Richardson, blogger and author of Recipe For America stopped into the Just Coffee World Headquarters a couple of months ago and sat down with Mike Moon and David Miller.    She wrote about us, fairtrade, cooperatives and global economics in her latest post.  Check out La Vida Locavore and join the discussion.

Friend of Just Coffee, Julia Baumgartner is traveling throughout Central America in the coming months.  During her travels she will be blogging here on our website.   Julia Baumgartner is home grown in our lovely state of Wisconsin and hails from the great city of Milwaukee.  Her long standing involvement and dedication to understanding other cultures lead her to graduate from UW Madison with a degree in Sociology and Spanish.  During her time in Madison, Julia has dedicated her time to bridging cultural barriers with the Hispanic community through education, advocacy, sports, and gardening.  With exceptional skill as a translator, advocate, and listener, Julia has become a trusted voice in the Hispanic community here at home as well as abroad.  While Julia has lived and traveled throughout South and Central America, this year her travels take her to familiar ground in El Salvador.  Over the past eight years she has developed close ties with a number of communities in this South American country.  This time she goes with a new set of eyes as she brings us with her in her adventures through the city and county and the people who live and grow food there.   Thanks for reading her blog and keep the comments coming.

Our friend John Peck is in Denmark peacefully demonstrating at the U.N. Climate Change Conference.  He ran into Patrick, of our sister company Just Coffee Denmark, selling coffee to U.N. delegates.  It's fairtrade, organic, sustainibly shade grown coffee so the trick was on them! That's Molly from WORT on the right talking with Patrick.  To read more about what is going on at the U.N. Climate Change Conference check out Family Farm Defenders website.

Heck yeah, We're on Tee Vee!