Fair Trade Coffee
Next Coffee Sale Date: September 13-14
What is Fair Trade? – It’s Coffee with a Conscience!
The Fair Trade Certified seal guarantees that more of every dollar makes it back to the men and women who grew it. Democratically organized farmers and workers form coffee cooperatives which deal directly with companies who roast, package and sell their coffee. These coops vote on how to best invest their profits based on their own local needs. After the tsunami of 2004, the Sumatra coffee cooperative used funds to repair their damaged port, enabling the country to continue shipping goods, maintaining their livelihood.
Because more of the selling price of each pound of coffee ends up in the hands of the farmers and their families, children are not needed to work in the fields. Schools have been built with the extra revenue, and children are being educated. In a small Nicaraguan village, a child has gone off to college for the very first time – thanks to higher income from coffee. A tea-growing cooperative in India has built a vocation school and provides scholarships for local children. In East Timor, the poorest country in Asia, the coffee cooperative there has built health clinics that now see an average of 18,00 patients per month. Their services are provided free of charge.
All this is possible because caring people choose to buy fair trade products. Since the beginning of the Fair Trade project in October of 2004, parishioners at Mary Immaculate have bought over 3,200 pounds of coffee and over 1,000 boxes of tea. Sales are held approximately once a month after all weekend Masses.
And the workers aren’t the only ones who benefit from your purchase of Fair Trade Coffee at Mary Immaculate. All coffee we sell is also Certified Organic – a better product for you and better for the environment. It is also shade grown underneath the canopy of naturally exiting trees, providing a haven for migratory birds, strengthening biodiversity, preventing soil erosion – and producing great tasting coffee.
And, finally, Catholic Relief Services receives a donation from every bag of coffee we buy. If you would like to help the Fair Trade Coffee Ministry, contact Leslie O’Connor at 286-7127.
Future Coffee Sale Dates:
October 18-19, November 22-23
Because more of the selling price of each pound of coffee ends up in the hands of the farmers and their families, children are not needed to work in the fields. Schools have been built with the extra revenue, and children are being educated. In a small Nicaraguan village, a child has gone off to college for the very first time – thanks to higher income from coffee. A tea-growing cooperative in India has built a vocation school and provides scholarships for local children. In East Timor, the poorest country in Asia, the coffee cooperative there has built health clinics that now see an average of 18,00 patients per month. Their services are provided free of charge.
All this is possible because caring people choose to buy fair trade products. Since the beginning of the Fair Trade project in October of 2004, parishioners at Mary Immaculate have bought over 3,200 pounds of coffee and over 1,000 boxes of tea. Sales are held approximately once a month after all weekend Masses.
And the workers aren’t the only ones who benefit from your purchase of Fair Trade Coffee at Mary Immaculate. All coffee we sell is also Certified Organic – a better product for you and better for the environment. It is also shade grown underneath the canopy of naturally exiting trees, providing a haven for migratory birds, strengthening biodiversity, preventing soil erosion – and producing great tasting coffee.
And, finally, Catholic Relief Services receives a donation from every bag of coffee we buy. If you would like to help the Fair Trade Coffee Ministry, contact Leslie O’Connor at 286-7127.
Future Coffee Sale Dates:
October 18-19, November 22-23
+++