Coffee Cups Create Change
A few weeks ago I was enjoying a cup of our organic criollo, a South American coffee cultivar, at a project site in Mexico. It’s a gift to see the growing hope in a community when we partner with them through practical means like coffee projects. What we’re about to share with you — a simple but revolutionary coffee product — is going global and it has potential to significantly expand our projects’ impact, especially those in the Upper Mekong Basin of South Asia. It’s exciting to think that now a single coffee cup can help protect kids from child soldiering.
At Project AK-47, we believe relationships are an essential part of what we do. We want to become part of the communities we serve, and often our investment goes beyond our schools and rescue homes to include local businesses. These innovative businesses share our passion for at-risk children and often our partnerships grow from, or turn into a close friendship. Together, we seek to empower and protect the local people.
One of our partners, coffee traders in the Upper Mekong Region, work alongside coffee farmers in the area to produce specialty grade coffee. They’ve brought hundreds of jobs to the area and, thanks to their recent partnership with Huskee, they have taken drastic steps to become a zero waste coffee processor.
At the end of a harvest, coffee farmers are left with tons of raw waste. Huskee decided to do something about it. They collected the waste — the husk of the coffee bean — and repurposed it to create HuskeeCup. It’s a reusable, biodegradable alternative to a ceramic coffee mug. When you see it, we think you will agree it is an elegant alternative too! So far they’ve collected more than 100 tons of waste from our partners in the Upper Mekong Region, creating a cleaner, greener coffee making process. Not only does it alleviate the burden of waste disposal, but it generates more income that goes back into the local community.
Local partnerships, like our relationship with coffee traders, are an essential component to reshaping regions of conflict and addressing the systemic inequity, poverty and corruption that put thousands of children in jeopardy. Their success means more jobs, more jobs foster economic stability, and economic stability allows more children to attend school. And, more children in school means less children trapped in soldiering, slavery or human trafficking.
Because of this, we’re thrilled to introduce the HuskeeCup. To learn more about Huskee and see the HuskeeCup click here.