Recently, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters made a $200,000 donation in the form of a 2 year grant to the Coffeelands Trust. Coffeelands is a fund that helps keep the international victims of conflict in coffee growing regions around the world connected. Coffee farmers and their families can receive direct funding from the Trust to help with food, improving coffee farms, vocational training, and health care services.
Since 2007, the Coffeelands trust has received support from Green Mountain, including mini-grants from the coffee company that were distributed to farmers in Nicaragua, Colombia, and Peru. Other companies have also been known to match Green Mountains donations in the past, including even the United States Department of State Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement and other private foundations.
The Coffeelands Trust continues to successfully help farmers improve and maintain their coffee crops by helping provide better mobility, providing and helping to find employment opportunities, and helping plant crops. Outreach workers for the Trust also specifically reach out to victims of conflict, including providing a retail store in Massachusetts and an online store to sell handicrafts made by locals in the coffee regions so they could gain another much needed source of income.
You can find out more information about the Coffeeland Trust or make a donation by visiting www.coffeelandstrust.org or calling 978-270-2457 and asking for Theresa Kane.