Sips: Season of giving

In the past, I have provided some suggestions for holiday gifts — great coffee- or bird-related charities as well as more conventional gifts for sustainable-coffee lovers. Here are my 2010 suggestions, which focus on helping people in coffee-growing communities.

• Sustainable Harvest International works in Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Through projects with organic vegetable gardens, wood-conserving stoves, and biogas digesters, SHI works in rural communities to preserve tropical forests while overcoming poverty.  You can support their work by contributing through AlternativeGifts.org to SHI’s sustainable farming project, which funds the planting of shade agroforestry crops such as coffee and cacao. You can also donate directly through their web site to that project, or others including funding women’s loans and wood-conserving stoves.
• Speaking of stoves, David Pohl of Equator Coffees recently wrote a great piece at Huffington Post outlining the huge problem in coffee-growing (and other rural) communities with primitive cooking methods that endanger health and the environment. This is a serious and widespread problem with straightforward solutions. One way to help is to donate to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
• Support organic farming — including coffee — in Chiapas, Mexico. This project is coordinated by International Development Exchange (IDEX), a grant-making non-profit that works with local organizations. You can donate via the Global Giving website.
• Grounds for Health provides cervical cancer screening in coffee-growing communities, and Coffee Kids [now under a larger foundation] has a wealth of programs in coffee communities in Latin America supporting education, health awareness, microcredit and food security.

Peace this holiday season.