Project Sekong 2013: We Clear Land. Villagers Plant More Coffee. We Sell Their Coffee. 100% Of The Profit Supports Our Work

Our organization’s most successful fundraiser to date was our recent sale of Lao coffee grown on the Bolaven Plateau, near our present worksite. I love coffee, and I begin every day with a pot brewed from locally grown Arabica beans. But my confidence in this coffee as a fundraiser soared as supporters in the US — who first tasted it as an experiment — came back repeatedly to buy more.

Customers in the US often ask whether the coffee is “fair trade.” We assure people that it is certified as such by the grower’s cooperative that supplies it to us. And better yet for our supporters in our home state of Wisconsin, we can attest to the fact that our beans come from small family farms.

One of the livelihood projects that we currently support in Laos is small-scale coffee production. For many villagers here in Sekong, the greatest challenge they face is the need to have their land cleared of bomblets and other remnants of war before they dare attempt to plant more trees.

Coffee production here leaves a small carbon footprint. Beans are hand-picked, hand-sorted, and hand-carried from orchard to home. Pictured above are coffee beans set out on a rack to dry in the sun.