Is there any better way to wake up in the morning than to the aroma of a perfect cup of coffee with the backdrop of your favorite song? Throughout history, music and coffee have fueled the work of the people and inspired our dreams, our passions and our hopes for a brighter future. For the past decade, May Erlewine has been a musical ambassador for Higher Grounds Trading Co. From Chiapas, Mexico to Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia, May has traveled to coffee origins with Higher Grounds to engage in a number of transnational collaborations including Guitars for Chiapas, Chiapas Water Projects, and Run Across Ethiopia. We are beyond excited to be partnering with May again to bring you Shine On.
The Coffee:
Shine On celebrates the merging of coffee and song with the shared creation of this sweet, mellow blend of coffees from the Huabal community (Cenfrocafe cooperative) of Peru and the Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (SCFCU) in Ethiopia.
CENFROCAFE was founded in 1999 with 220 small-scale coffee farmers in eleven community-based associations. Huabal is one of those member communities. Nearly fifteen years after their founding, CENFROCAFE, now based out of Jaen, serves more than 2,000 farmer members in local associations spanning across twelve districts within the lush Cajamarca region.
SCFCU was founded in 2001 to represent coffee producing cooperatives located throughout the Sidama Zone of southern Ethiopia both locally and in international markets. Today, SCFCU has grown to represent 51 cooperatives and more than 76,000 small-scale farmer families — making SCFCU the second largest Coffee Farmer Cooperative Union in Ethiopia.
This deliciously complex blend of beans from these two great coops features notes of brown sugar, honey, and plum jam. It is a great cup for your morning rise and shine or for an afternoon pick-me-up.
Orders for this coffee (or the coffee & mug combo) will roast and ship Thursday, December 12, 2020.
The Work:
Believing in the power of our work as a community, and believing that our community is stronger when we work towards dismantling structural racism and towards healing, we are dedicating $1/bag of coffee to the racial justice education of Title Track.
Title Track engages creative practice to build resilient social ecological systems that support clean water, racial equity, and youth empowerment. It is the result of years of team building and the legacy of the Neahtawanta Research and Education Center. The organization launched on Earth Day 2019 to bring enriching collaborative programs and content benefitting people and place. Founded by Michigan singer-songwriter and activist, Seth Bernard, Title Track offers a broad set of programming building upon Bernard’s lifetime of music making, community organizing, and advocacy for the environment and social justice. If you’d like to support this incredible organization directly you can do so here.
Tune in to Facebook at 7pm tonight (Tuesday, December 1) to see May perform at the GroundBeaking of Commongrounds Cooperative in Traverse City!