My name is Carly Kadlec and I have been with Equal Exchange for just over two months. I am a Green Coffee Buyer. I just returned from my first big trip to visit coffee farmers in Peru and Bolivia. A big part of my job is this sort of “origin trip” to visit farmers and see how their harvest is going, discuss our quality standards with them, go over the previous year’s contracts with the co-operatives, and discuss the greater world of coffee face-to-face with farmers.
Tags: coffee
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Beth Ann CaspersenJune 19, 2013Over the years we have worked with cuppers from around the world as a tool to find and secure delicious coffee. We wondered, how can we better connect baristas and coffee shop owners, the folks who sell and represent the delicious coffee we work so hard to lay hands on, with coffee cuppers, the people that work so hard to get us these tasty little beans? The result: Cooperation in Quality 2013.
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Tom Hanlon-WildeApril 1, 2013This July, exactly 10 years after taking a group of food co-op and natural foods store customers to visit with coffee farmers in the village of Coyona in Peru, our same group will return to to see first-hand the impact of Fair Trade.
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Cindy MowryMarch 29, 2013We are super excited to have the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) host its annual event in our backyard at the Boston Convention Center April 11-14, 2013. Many of us at Equal Exchange will be attending SCAA-related events throughout the week, and we’ll also be hosting a few events of our own.
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Phyllis_RobinsonFebruary 21, 2013aúl del Águila Hidalgo, General Manager of Equal Exchange’s trading partner COCLA and a leader in the international fair trade movement, died suddenly on February 13. EE’s Tom Hanlon-Wilde shares this memory.
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Charlie BrandesDecember 11, 2012Meet Ed Bachleda, organizer of Equal Exchange sales at St. Catherine of Sienna church in Portage, Mich. I recently got to meet Ed and see firsthand how he organizes his inventory, and schedules volunteers to sell Equal Exchange fairly traded products after four masses twice each month.
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Beth Ann CaspersenDecember 6, 2012I was nervous about my trip to the D.R. Congo. A war has raged there on and off for decades, and heightened violence and political unrest in 2012 has left more than 500,000 people internally displaced. There was a brief lull in the violence during the month of October, so I took the opportunity to go visit our producer partners at SOPACDI and then make the journey across Lake Kivu to visit the Panzi Hospital.
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AnonymousAugust 1, 2012
Kathy Zielinski of St. Monica-St. George Parish Newman Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, shares how she and her congregation have supported small farmers for over 20 years with Equal Exchange. Many thanks to this amazing church for their years of partnership.
20 Years of Justice
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Beth Ann CaspersenJune 4, 2012Equal Exchange Quality Manager Beth Ann Caspersen took a coffee "Q Course" at the Coffee Quality Institute, then went through a two-year apprenticeship to become a Q Instructor so that she can teach the Q Course herself. She's one of 31 certified Q Instructors in the world.
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Mike MowryApril 3, 2012In February I spent a week traveling around Ethiopia with representatives from other coffee companies as part of a Cupping Caravan. In two 15 passenger vans, top loaded with gas ranges, propane, and 5 gallon bottles of water, we spent the first few days cupping—the industry term for analyzing coffee—at various ECX field labs. ECX stands for the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, which is the government agency responsible for grading all commodities produced in Ethiopia.