Your morning coffee tastes good – but does it also do good?  What if every cup you drank could support small farmers using sustainable methods which respect the environment, rather than industrialized agribusiness that relies on exploited labor and harmful chemicals?

These are the questions that the founders of Equal Exchange set out to answer when they began in 1986.  Equal Exchange is a worker-owned, fair-trade food company with which the UUSC collaborates – particularly through the UUSC coffee project – to support small farmers throughout the world.  Listen to one of them describe the difference Equal Exchange has made in her life:  “Everything I grow is organic.  Why?  You see my hands; they're covered in dirt.  But they're no longer burnt from using chemicals.  And my land?  Well, it's time to give back to the land a part of what the land has given me.”  Don͂a Ana Lucia Ban͂ol, Colombia

Your Coffee Project purchases benefit partner farmers like Don͂a Ban͂ol – and 20 cents per pound also goes to the UUSC Small Farmers Fund.  In addition to supporting the farmer co-ops that supply Equal Exchange's products, UUSC uses the Small Farmer Fund to partner with other cooperatives that build sustainable livelihoods and advance human rights – particularly the rights of women, youth and indigenous peoples.

Every fall the Guest At Your Table project asks you to contribute to the work of the UUSC.   The Coffee Project is a way to continue your support all year round.    Put your Unitarian-Universalist values to work at your breakfast table.  Visit Steve Marek's table in the Parish Hall during coffee hour and take home some Fair Trade coffee, tea or chocolate.