Just Haiti works with an association of subsistence Haitian coffee growers and their families in Baradères, Haiti, to bring Kafe Lespwa, their high-quality, organic, shade-grown Arabica coffee, to North American consumers.

In 2010, 49 cents of each dollar that U.S. consumers spent on Kafe Lespwa—Creole for "Coffee of Hope"—went to the subsistence farmers who grew the beans.

Shade-grown coffee, grown for export and offered to consumers at a fair price, may represent the best hope a typical Haitian coffee farmer holds for the future.

In that future, farm families can break the stranglehold of poverty and violence that have choked the just development of rural Haiti for hundreds of years.

In that future, farmers will build economic independence and social justice, while growing a sustainable, environmentally friendly cash crop.

The coffee plants themselves, grown under thick forest, make the ecosystem healthier. They serve to reduce soil erosion, flooding, sedimentation and water pollution.

Through our efforts, the Haitian farmers today receive a fair, sustainable price for their harvest. Eventually, they will also manage coffee processing, roasting, packaging, sales and shipping.

Most “fair trade” coffee is roasted and packaged by middleman organizations. Their profits significantly exceed those of the growers.

By contrast, with fair-trade-plus, farmers reap much more of the profit of their coffee's full market value. In 2009, for example, the earnings of the growers' association amounted to more than three times the fair-trade-price.

Shade-grown, organic, fair-trade-plus coffee has many other benefits:

• It represents rural development that primarily aids rural residents—not far-away business interests.
   
• By requiring preservation of large trees, it maintains soil fertility and prevents deforestation.
   
• The trees shield soil from the erosive pounding of tropical rainstorms. Less erosion means less sedimentation, less downstream flooding, and less water pollution.
   
• The forests also preserve important habitat for wildlife, including North American migrant birds such as the American Redstart and other warbler species. 
  

Thanks to donations from many supporters, Just Haiti in 2009 provided the Baradères growers' association with the first half of a zero-interest business loan the association will repay over 5 years.

With the loan funds, the association purchased two hank-crank depulping machines and built the first two of four planned sites for processing and drying harvested coffee cherries. They began using these sites to process the harvest in the late summer of 2010. Other investments are needed to expand the business. And as the association repays the loan, Just Haiti will use the money to make similar loans to other small business projects in Haiti.

To donate to Just Haiti, click here. Your contribution is fully tax deductible. The Internal Revenue Service has determined that Just Haiti is a tax-exempt public charity under Section 501(c)(3).

Just Haiti works to alleviate poverty, hunger, violence, illiteracy and disease in Haiti by fostering small-business development, education programs, employment opportunity, infrastructure improvement and environmental quality. Just Haiti is a Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization.

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