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20th (2)

Coffee Kids 20th Anniversary DVD Now Available

Posted by Coffee Kids on October 24, 2008 at 11:03am
Coffee Kids recently completed a DVD celebrating our 20th Anniversary with the help of Machine Hero, a Rhode Island-based communication arts company. The original 10-minute film can be seen below. It explores Coffee Kids role in the global coffee community and how support for organizations like Coffee Kids translates to support for the long term future of the specialty coffee industry.The DVD features additional information on conditions in coffee-farming communities and extended interviews with Coffee Kids' Founder Bill Fishbein and Board President Rob Stephen, as well as Carlos Murillo of Expocert, a former Coffee Kids partner, and Lois Maffeo of Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters, a Coffee Kids supporter. Machine Hero did a great job of capturing the nuances of our mission and we're proud of the results.The DVD is available for $10, please visit our online shop and scroll down to the propaganda section or send an e-mail to info@coffeekids.org
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20th Anniversary Reflections: David Abedon

Posted by Coffee Kids on April 28, 2008 at 11:21am
Throughout the year of 2008, Coffee Kids will occasionally post comments from important figures in our history and how they helped shape the organization. In this entry, David Abedon, a co-founder of the organization, chronicles the beginning of Coffee Kids when he helped Bill Fishbein plan his trip to Guatemala to visit coffee-farming families in the late '80s. Abedon is a professor in the Natural Resources Science Department in the College of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. He currently serves on Coffee Kids board of directors.

abedon.jpg"In the 80s I applied for a sabbatical leave from URI and stayed at Brown University in the School for Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.

"In order to get to Brown, I would walk from my house through Wickendon Street to the east side of Providence to Brown. I would stop at Bill's store, the Coffee Exchange, for some muffins on my way to work and on my way back and that's when we started to discuss coffee and poverty.

"So when Bill told me he was going down to Guatemala, I said, 'What are you going to do when you get there? Who are you going to see?' And Bill said, 'Well, I don't know. I just have to go.'
"So we looked at the schedule and started to set things up.
"I called up Partners for the Americas and Bill and I figured out a way for him to visit some of these coffee regions and so he came back and said, 'We gotta' do something.'

"I said, 'What?' He said, 'I don't know, what?'

"Sometime along when we were starting to figure things out and we'd started to do some fundraisers, I invited Dean Cycon and he and Bill hit it off and Coffee Kids mushroomed from there."

For more information on the history of Coffee Kids, download our latest newsletter (PDF 1.9MB).
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