Do you enjoy a nice, steaming (or iced) cup of coffee every once in a while (or all the time)? If you live in the United States (or Canada), there’s an 83% chance you do. After water, coffee is the most popular beverage in the world and, after crude oil, it’s the most valuable legally traded commodity in the world. About 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed globally every day, contributing to an industry that is worth about $100 billion worldwide. In such a lucrative field, you would think farmers would be doing pretty well.
In reality, most coffee farmers are often paid only 70-80 cents per pound. The majority of the money goes to coffee retailers, who sell the coffee in chains around the world. However, some of these retailers are turning to Fair Trade coffees. Fair trade coffee provides the coffee farmers with better conditions, more respect, and a higher percentage of the profits, typically about $1.26 per pound. In order for coffee to be considered fair trade, the coffee importer buys the coffee directly from the grower, and pays more to the grower. Many of these farmers live and work in Costa Rica, where coffee is the third largest export, and the beans are considered some of the best in the world.
To teach your students more about fair trade, bring them to see it in action. On our Make a Difference: Costa Rica Sun & Service tour, students will visit a fair trade coffee plantation in Los Santos, where they will learn about ethical trading practices, the organic coffee farming process and the impact of sustainable farming worldwide. Students will be immersed in the local community, working alongside local coffee farmers, eating lunch in the Los Santos community center, and even attending traditional dance lessons. Then, the students will give back to the community: painting murals, paving paths, digging holes for planting, or harvesting coffee beans during the summer. They might even build public structures with “eco-bricks,” recycled bottles full of recycled plastic waste, which are cemented together to build walls, steps, benches, planters, or even wells for the rural Los Santos coffee farming community. When they’re not volunteering, your students will be exploring the natural beauty of Costa Rica, kayaking, swimming, and ziplining through the country’s many diverse ecosystems.
This is just one of the many ways we give students the opportunity to jump up off the sidelines and become a change agent with our educational service tours. We believe that service tours should be more than just a spectator sport, where visitors observe from a distance, do a little yard work, and then jet back home to return to their daily lives. Our Make a Difference tours take you off the sidelines and throw you in the middle of another civilization, where you will work side by side with the residents of the community to complete a stand-alone project to bring immediate and vital change. No matter what your project, you are guaranteed a life-changing experience that goes far below surface level.
Join our Make a Difference tours to Tanzania, Morocco, Thailand, Costa Rica, Mexico and Australia, and see how you can change the world.
Absolutely brilliant. I would love to take part