A Picture Story from Portrait of Words
Life Changing
This is Gabino Cipriano shown here with his wife and one of his three children.
They live in one of the most beautiful areas of the world.
He and his family work hard and every Sunday attend this Church.
Gabino, like his father before him is a coffee grower. He grows some of the finest coffee in the world but until recently he was dirt poor. The big coffee companies controlled the market and didn't pay him very much for his coffee But they were his only market.But that was before the bus came. On the side it said Lutheran World Relief and Fair Exchange
.
It seems they were setting up cooperatives all through Latin America so that small farmers likeGabino could sell their coffee through them and get a fair price. They had their own warehouses and transfer facilities.
Further a group called Equal Exchange would process and sell the coffee through churches in the United States. It even had it's own website.Further, part of the money from the sale would be used by Lutheran World Relief for projects in Gabino's community.
Gabino joined that day and has never been sorry. He looks forward to a happier future.
3 comments:
Is this something you are relating from personal experience? I believe in a past post you mentioned something like this.
Bravo for the Lutheran's for helping the small farmers.
You gotta be KIDDIN' me! I can HELP the poor just by drinkin' more coffee! I will never buy coffee from any other source again!
Excuse me... I'm going shopping now! Lutheran World Relief... look out! Here I come!
We have a fair trade shop in Belfast that I love; it's a used bookshop on one side (they take donations and proceeds help the FT programmes) and on the other side all sorts of wonderful handcrafted things that make great gifts, and of course the tea and coffee!
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