Million Dollar Donation

One of our favorite organizations working in this industry is Coffee Kids.  The nonprofit supports projects across coffee communities in Latin America focusing on health care, food security, economic diversification, and education. In all honesty, one of the most rewarding aspect of working in the specialty coffee business is the way that our actions and decisions as businesses can make a real and honest impact on people’s lives even half-a-word away. It’s not every industry where that’s true, where supporting certain organization, or making certain buying choices can affect a child’s education, a community’s health, the environment and more.

We had an extensive interview with Bill Fishbein, the found of Coffee Kids, in the February + March 2014 issue, and if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, you really ought to take a few minutes and give it a read. It’s impressive not just because it shows what one person can do (and of course one of the thing you realize immediately when reading the interview is how Bill did not do it on his own, and how quickly he would point out all of the people who helped him along the way), but Bill’s story, like so many of us in coffee, is almost a happy accident but what he did when he got into the business is not. How he ended up working in coffee, how he saw the poverty that many coffee farmers live in, and how he dedicated himself and his organization to changing that is relatable, admirable, and straight up awesome.

But it’s not just a few small companies and individuals who are involved with Coffee Kids, and again it’s one of the great things about working in specialty coffee that business large and small actually give a damn, not just about profits, but about actually positively impacting change where they can. To that end consider this: in April, DaVinci Gourmet reached a huge milestone with Coffee Kids. Over the course of eight years, DaVinci Gourmet has donated $1,000,000 to the organization! That is absolutely fantastic!