Coffee for Education!
Help Kopi Help WIJABAFriends & Coffee Lovers!
The Kopi Trading Company (Kopi), a brother-sister run craft coffee operation in New York, has partnered up with The World Is Just a Book Away (WIJABA), helping to grow their initiatives on behalf of spreading literacy and environmental consciousness to children in primary schools located in under-served parts of Sidoarjo, Sumatra. WIJABA seeks to bring books and educational development to children and communities through constructing libraries in primary schools across the globe. (To learn more visit: www.wijaba.org)
Kopi was started in 2014, a small player in a world of craft coffee hard hitters. We knew little about the business, but from day one we knew that we would do more than brew. The company's focus on Indonesian coffee naturally led to looking for non-profit partners working in the country, a geography so full of promise, yet so burdened by inequities. Soon we were connected with WIJABA.
They introduced us to their organization's work to empower children through environmental education and consciousness in Sidoarjo, Sumatra communities that are enduring some of the world's most pressing environmental problems. WIJABA, through it's educational programs and libraries, is currently providing young people with the knowledge, tools, and inspiration to make a difference in their local environment and in the quality of life for their local rainforests, animals and people. Specifically, WIJABA is affecting change through their libraries and interactive curriculum development by imparting the basic knowledge and tools necessary for each of them to improve their communities. By operating through WIJABA libraries, the educational programs help cultivate and encourage children and teachers into taking action in their communities to:
- Learn about environmental, animal, and humanitarian issues affecting our world
- Share insights, ideas, and inspiration for making positive change
- Grow in ways that enrich lives—as individuals, as members of the local community and as global citizens
Indonesia’s rainforests are one of the earth’s most biologically and culturally rich landscapes. However, it continues to have one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, with half of the country’s forests now lost. It is common practice to burn forests to clear land for cash crops, with pesticides and factory run-off polluting the waterways and soil. The destruction is so great, that Indonesia is now third after the US and China in terms of high levels of carbon emissions.
It’s a BIG problem.
However, today, we have in front of us an opportunity to be a part of the collective solution. Programs such as WIJABA's environmental education, which will launch this year at 80 schools in Sidoarjo, Sumatra, is empowering children to know and understand what protects their communities and our environment and what destroys it. They will in turn be the motivating force that keeps Indonesia lush and vibrant in the future. Invest in children. Invest in hope for a solution. Invest in coffee. Please join us in this quest to support WIJABA by making a contribution today.
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” - The Lorax, Dr. Seuss
