It’s no secret that all coffee consumed in developed nations flows from the Third World, but what is less known is that some fortunate coffee drinkers want to give back.
That’s the ambition behind the Stick in the Mud, a Sooke coffee shop and roastery.
Starting this week, the folks at the Stick will be offering a different kind of coffee: Ethiopian Limu Grade 2, or, as owner David Evans calls it, The Orphan Girl.
Every penny made from the exotic coffee will go to support a Sooke humanitarian whose sole purpose in the last few decades has been going to Ethiopia every year and helping orphaned children, the disabled and making a better life for everyone.
“He’s doing stuff that we’d all love to do, and there’s that vicarious notion of helping someone who’s doing something you wish you could do,” Evans said. “He talks the talk, but he walks the walk.”
The project is expected to raise around $2,000, covering travel and other expenses.
Evans said the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, has used his pension money to keep going back to Ethiopia and continue his efforts there.
“Every penny he’s had is going to Ethiopia; he wants to get back there and keep doing it,” he said.
Orphan Girl is named after a documentary made by the mysterious Sookie, about an Ethiopian woman whose life goes sideways after losing her leg to infection, among other hardships.
Mind you, the coffee won’t be made to reflect that awfulness, as first and second batches will be roasted first to get the coffee to a pristine taste.
“We take the beans and we try to determine how we think they’re going to roast and how we think we’ll get flavours out of them,” Evans said, adding that the coffee was donated by a coffee importer in Seattle. “It will evolve over the course of the run, so by the third batch, it will be delicious.”
The Stick has done things like this in the past, completely unrelated to coffee.
In the past few years the business raised thousands of dollars for scholarships in Boquete, Panama, on two occasions, and it’s also gathered computers donated by Sooke residents and delivered them to a school in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.