URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/north/291036218972north12-29-08.htm

Monday, December 29, 2008
Santa Fe Nonprofit Group Helps Growers in Mexico and Elsewhere
By Emily Van Cleve
For the Journal
   
   
    When Coffee Kids' communications manager Kyle Freund traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, at the end of November to attend the opening of a new training center built by the Center of Support for the Popular Movement of Oaxaca (CAMPO), he was delighted to find 800 locals at the celebration. The training center is a place where people can learn about animal husbandry, fruit and vegetable canning and how to raise chickens.
   
    The majority of the funding for the facility has come from Coffee Kids, a Santa Fe-based nonprofit organization that helps coffee-farming families improve the quality of their lives by partnering with agencies like CAMPO.
   
    "I had a pretty amazing weekend in Oaxaca," Freund said. "I learned what this training center will mean to the people of this area who have felt there are no opportunities for them."
   
    In a world where coffee farmers often earn four cents a pound for the coffee they pick by hand, the income from coffee farming doesn't take care of a family's basic needs. Supplemental sources of income are needed in order to survive. Many coffee farmers face malnutrition, poor sanitation conditions and little to no access to health care or education.
   
    Providence, R.I., coffee roaster and retailer Bill Fishbein founded Coffee Kids in 1988 as a way to support organizations that help coffee farmers. When Fishbein moved his family from Providence to Santa Fe in 1992, he began a six-year process of moving his organization to New Mexico. The main office relocated to Santa Fe in 1998.
   
    The executive director of Coffee Kids is Carolyn Fairman, who received her master's degree in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico before working for the organization as an international program coordinator from 2000 to 2003. She has seen firsthand how programs supported by Coffee Kids have benefitted coffee-growing families throughout Mexico and Central America.
   
    "Several years ago, I remember sitting in the house of a woman from Veracruz, Mexico, who participates in a micro-loan program that Coffee Kids supports," Fairman said. "It was cold and damp in the house. Light was coming through the slats in the walls. She started telling me how much the micro-loan program has helped her.
   
    "She formed a business group with other women through the micro-loan program, and that group has generated its own income. When she needs a small loan to pay a doctor, she can borrow money from her business group at a very low rate of interest instead of going somewhere else and paying up to 50 percent interest on the loan. She told me it calms her nerves to have a place to go for help."
   
    Most of Coffee Kids' 12 partnering organizations in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Peru help address the immediate needs of coffee-farming families. A lot of the programs are centered around food.
   
    "For some families, it's about how to sell the surplus," Fairman said. "But, generally, families don't have money for food. Through our partners, these people have learned how to can fruits and vegetables during the growing season so they can have food year round."
   
    Coffee Kids also supports projects involving youth development, health and environmental education, biodiesel production, adult literacy and honey production.
   
    Donations from coffee-related businesses make up 83 percent of Coffee Kids' annual budget of $1 million. An average of 75 percent of the money goes to cover program expenses. The rest supports four full-time and two part-time staff members in the Santa Fe headquarters and two international program coordinators in the organization's Oaxaca office.
   
    To find out more about Coffee Kids, visit the Web site www.coffeekids.org or call 800-334-9099.