Got plans tonite? Break ‘em and check these out:

FOOD FOR THOUGHT hosts the second annual Green Cuisine - a celebration of local food, wine and beer.  Seth Bernard and Daisy May will be on hand for great music, too.  It’s a kid-friendly, zero-waste FREE event! A big thanks to Timothy & Kathy Young, Evan Smith and the rest of the crew at FFT for all their support through the years - this was my first job upon return from Chiapas and these guys supported Higher Grounds from it’s very infancy!

The SAFE PASSAGE FIESTA takes place at the Hagerty Center.  Support Safe Passage’s program helping children and their families who work in the Guatemala City Dump.  Purchase Higher Ground’s Safe Passage Blend at the Fiesta and we’ll donate 100% of the proceeds to Safe Passage. Pick up a bag at the Coffee Bar and we’ll donate $5.50/lb.

Saturday, April 26th - ALL PROCEEDS from the sale of our Safe Passage Blend & Brewed Safe Passage brewed coffee will be donated to the Great Lakes Friends of Safe Passage

Fri April 25th - Mon April 27th - Virtual Dump Installation on Display

The Virtual Garbage Dump installation is photographic journey through the Guatemala City Garbage Dump from behind the lens of area photographer Beth Price.The mission of Safe Passage is to empower the poorest, at-risk children of families working in the community of the Guatemala City garbage dump, by creating opportunities and fostering dignity through the power of education.

More information on GUATEMALA from Great Lakes Friends of Safe Passage

Guatemala means “land of trees”. A thousand years ago, the remarkable Mayan civilization flourished here. Today more than half of Guatemalans are descendantsof this proud heritage. Mayan languages are spoken alongside Spanish — the official language. The country’s beauty and cultural strength is not accompanied by prosperity or cohesion. In 1996 it emerged from a 36-year civil war. More than 200,000 people, most indigenous civilians, were killed. Refugees fled to Guatemala City, leaving
their traditional way of life in the highlands. Today, poverty is widespread, estimated at 70-80% of the population. Nearly halfof Guatemala’s children are chronically malnourished. The poorest of the poor struggle for survival at the Guatemala City Garbage Dump, the largest landfill in Central America; 1/3 of the country’s trash ends up here.
For over 60 years this has been the home and workplace for thousands of familieswho make their living salvaging from the City’s trash. Many have lived at the dumpfor 20-30 years, passing this way of life on from one generation to the next. It’sestimated that 3500 children currently live in this toxic wasteland.

Any coffee roaster who has traveled beyond the tourist confines of origin country knows the paradoxical reality present in coffee growing communities. Those that grow the world’s highest quality beans are usually cursed to wake up to some of the worst tasting coffees known to anything with taste buds. Most times this is true for pretty much all of coffee growing countries except for the privileged who are able to buy imported coffees. The rest drink Nescafe.

The reason - fairly simple. Countries who depend on coffee as a main source of their GDP, export the highest quality beans for sale to the highest bidder. As well, most producers do not have the available credit to purchase a roaster, bags, and grinder nor access to a market.

In an $80 billion industry, producing countries receive only 20% of net revenues—farmers earn less than 10% (according to Food First). Deviron and Stefano point out in the Coffee Paradox that the top five coffee multinationals, Kraft, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Sara Lee, and Tchibo control 69% of the global coffee roasting industry. This doesn’t leave much of a market for the rest of us in a country which holds 1/5th of the world’s coffee drinkers and much less for our unfortunate coffee growing friends.

Moreover, due to the poor economy of almost all coffee growing countries, most homes purchase the least expensive option - instant coffee usually dumped from far off - cheaper locales, such as Vietnam. And at the ironic bottom of the pole, are most coffee growing communities, consuming defected beans they can not sell in the market. Roasting them over an open fire they then hand grind and brew em’ cowboy style - boiled in water.

But there is hope for our coffee drinking companeros south of the border. Small scale growers are hooking up propane tanks to old drum roasters, dropping in batches of freshly picked and processed green beans and roasting up some specialty coffees to be distributed throughout their home countries. Sure, they won’t size up to the well-balanced bright taste of our export friendly friends up north but they are much better then what they’ve been drinking down south. I had the unique opportunity to backpack across the Mayan Highlands of Southern Mexico and Guatemala to check on the status of this burgeoning wave of truly handcrafted coffee roasting.

My first stop was at Maya Vinic - our oldest partner growing co-op and very good friends. Maya Vinic is a great example of a cooperative that is working toward vertical integration. The nearly 500 growers own their own bodega, processing center and have a small roasting facility. Not bad for being in the coffee export business for just 7 years! All coffees that don’t pass through the processing plant as export grade are returned to their roastery where they throw them in their 30 pound roaster for use in their national market. Distributors in Merida and Mexico City sell the beans under the brand “Maya Vinic” to restaurants, grocery stores, and hotels throughout the country.

After a day of crossing the border at La Mesilla and negotiating the various mountains, ravines, and rivers that make up North-West Guatemala I arrived in Xelajú (or Quetzaltenango as the Spaniards renamed it after conquering the Mayan Mam population). This bustling highland city acts as the center of commerce for the various indigenous communities that ring the ten mountains that hover over it. There, I met with Cafe Conciencia - an organization formed to help commercialize the coffee of 4 different growing cooperatives scattered in the mountains of San Marcos and Quetzaltenango.

At the end of a long winding road that cuts into the side of a mountain, the road up to Tajulmulco Organic Coffee Organization of Small Organic Coffee Growers Maya Mames (Apecaform) is the most dangerous I’ve been on since traveling the “death road” in Bolivia. Over the course of two hours we climbed the side of the Tajumulco Volcano, weaving between boulders trying to stay between the cliff and the side of the mountain. The roasters at Apecaform have a great history. For nearly 10 years they roasted their beans over an open fire. As the wooden shack that housed their “roaster” would fill with smoke, shifts of women took turns inhaling the smoke and turning the barrel by hand. Today, thanks to the Fair Trade Fund at Catholic Relief Services, the women now have a brand new roaster and much better coffee to drink each day.

The Guatemala City Cemetery sits in Zone 3 overlooking the 50-year-old city garbage dump. The dead and their mourners watch as 3 garbage trucks enter each minute to dispense the cities trash at one of the largest garbage dump in Latin America. From the cemetery, 2000 workers sorting through the filth appear to be ants in the bottom of a vast pit – one that some could easily

be mistaken for hell. 80% of the workers are indigenous, 85% are women – castaways of the global economy, many of them migrating to the city from coffee growing communities. They work 6 am to 6 pm and earn a total of 15 quetzales, barely 2 dollars. Besides the obvious dangers of broken glass, bacteria, bugs, illness, the workers are exposed to high levels of methane gas.

As I stare into the nearly endless pile of trash, Fredy Maldonado, director of donations and special projects as Safe Passage, and guide for the day tells me in broken English, “Chris we must go quickly, it is lonely here.”

Lonely is an understatement. Vultures hover overhead. Old coffins pile up at the bottom of the cliff at the garbage dumps’ edge. Cemetery guards throw corpses into the pit if their families have not paid the 12-dollar yearly fee. Graves, decaying shrines, garbage, vultures, and open caskets surround me – the place is begging to be the locale for a horror flick.

“Yes, I know it is a lonely place Fredy, but I’ve come a long way to learn about Safe Passage. Just let me walk around a little bit and take it all in.” I tell him, indignant and attempting to flex my power as guest and donor. After Jody and I were contacted by the Friends of Safe Passages in Traverse City to create a Coffee for Change coffee to raise funds for the school, I’ve arrived to learn about the project first hand and I’m not ready to go. It doesn’t work though. Fredy realized that I don’t understand him and he switches to Spanish to clarify.

”We are alone here Chris, it is very dangerous. Someone can come and rob us. Usually we have guards but your visit was last minute so I didn’t get a chance to have one come with us.” Being in one of the worst parts of town in arguably the most dangerous capital city in Latin America he has a point. Each week over 50 people are murdered in this city. 6000 people are murdered a year in the country - more then all of our soldiers fighting in two wars. He grabs my bag and we scurry toward the car heading back to Safe Passage.

Wherever I’ve found poverty throughout the world, I’ve encountered well-intentioned foreigners desperately trying to “help.” Safe Passage is a rare example of a foreigner coming to the underdeveloped world, having a pipe dream to “help the people” and actually doing it.

Hanley Denning founded Safe Passage as an oasis for the children of the garbage dump in 1999. Eight years later, the after school program and early intervention program care for over 600 children who without the program are left on the streets and the slums as their parents toil away in the dump.

Health care, meals, supplementary education, and most important Fredy tells me, love, is provided unconditionally free of charge. In a tragic turn of events, Hanley died last year in a fatal automobile accident. Her vision continues on as over 600 volunteers come from around the world each year to work with the children. Amidst, death and the dump, Safe Passage provides a ray of hope to the poorest of the poor in Guatemala.

There are few places more stunning in the world then Lago Atitlan (aka Chol Lake to the Ka’ckchiquel Maya) in the Guatemalan highlands. The lake is the result of a huge volcanic explosion over 85,000 years ago. Today 3 mammoth volcanos grace its shores and Mayan communities dot its borders. After settling the area in the 1200’s,

here multiple ethnicities of the Mayan people live today. Tourism, coffee farming, and traditional weaving are the main sources of income for the Mayan communities, but a small group has found a unique way to find a fair wage for their craft.

Los Cuchareros are a group of nine Ka´ckchiquel Maya who are artisans of the handmade spoon. From soup ladels to coffee scoops, the Cuchareros gather wood from old coffee trees and shade trees in coffee fields to craft their spoons with great care.

Fray, Julio, Martin, Antonio, Mayses, Adonias, Lesvia, Claudia, and Florinda spend hours each day, cutting, sawing and carving each spoon by hand. Natural Sealants such as Bees Wax and Candle Wax are used to seal the spoons. It is hard not to recognize the craftsmanship of the spoons as Fray Gerber Jacinto Campor mentioned as he hands me the order I will carry back home, “No two products are the same Chris, we are artisans who make each product with our own hands.”

As we sit nearly a spoons’ (big ladle rather then small coffee scoop) throw from Lago Atitlan in the sleepy but culturally vibrant town of San Lucas Toliman, Volcano Toliman hovers overhead. The Cuchareros tell me that the order I have come to pick up for our Coffee Bar is their largest request yet. With the purchase of each spoon they provide $1 to $2 dollars to local elderly people. In Guatemala, the elderly receive a pension of less then $90 dollars a month. The income provided by the spoons goes along way to help the elders of their local community. 100% percent of the sale of each spoon goes directly into their pocket - no bureaucratic NGO administrative fees here!

If you are in Traverse City, stop by next week to check em out!