Bill Fishbein Email & Phone Number

Santa Fe, Nm

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Farmer to Farmer DevelopmentThe Coffee Trust promotes grass roots development in the Ixil region of Guatemala supporting locally controlled development, based upon the shared learning principles of Campesino a Campesino. Programs focus on education, health care, food sovereignty and economic development. Due to the devastation of la roya, the coffee-leaf-eating fungus that has been destroying coffee plants throughout Central America, in 2014 The Coffee Trust added its Roya Recovery to program development.We also invest in an intensive capacity building effort that focuses on organizational development, and financial sustainability for our local partners.The overall goal is to provide each local NGO with the tools and the capacity to thrive with or without support from The Coffee Trust. In cases where there had been no local NGO, The Coffee Trust team of development professionals, agronomists, and local promoters act in that role until a local NGO can be formed. Currently, the Food Sovereignty Project is set the umbrella of Chajulense de Mujeres and the Roya Recovery Project is under the umbrella of Asociación Chajulense.Asociacion Chajuense (AC), the local, fair trade, organic coffee cooperative, was a beacon of hope in the Ixil region during Guatemala's brutal civil war. After the war, AC provided a home for the women's micro-credit project, honey production, and logistical support for The Coffee Trust; Now, Asociacion Chajulense is facing its greatest challenge since the war. The coffee-leaf-eating fungus, La Roya, devastated close to 80% of its coffee production in 2014.In 2014, The Coffee Trust began a Roya Recovery Pilot Project with 241 small-scale coffee producers from Asociación Chajulense. Effective Micro-organisms were used as a defense against the fungus and a series of organic, soil replenishment activities were implemented to nourish the soil, which had been depleted from years of neglect.

Santa Fe, Nm

The Coffee Trust works with the indigenous, Mayan Ixil coffee producers (pronounced we-SHEEL) in San Gaspar Chajul, Guatemala helping them to improve their organic agricultural practices, diversify their income and raise healthy families. The Coffee Trust does not follow a model in what we do. We do have certain principles that guide our efforts. We gave learned that it’s not so easy to help. That if you help even a little too much you can do more harm than good. We have learned that people hold the solutions to their own problems. Not granting organizations. Not major donors. And, not successful coffee roasters. The people who hold the solution to problems at origin are the people who live those problems day in and day out. The reason is that those solutions must fall within the margins of their own culture. Their own values and their own priorities. For 75 years trillions of dollars have been spent on international development by organizations that design projects from the top down. Over these years, not only has poverty thrived at origin snd around the world. There are actually more people in poverty today than there ever was and a case could be made that people are actually poorer today than ever before. It only takes an element of common sense to realize that this top down development doesn’t work. Besides,… nothing grows from the top down. Things grow from the ground up.We have learned that people learn best from their neighbors than from professionals. Learning from neighbors is empowering, as they believe they can do what their neighbors do. They wish they could be as capable as a professional. Learning from a professional is actually disempowering. We have learned that women are the most powerful people on the planet.We have had a great deal of experience in microcredit and gave learned that a microcredit program without savings is an exploitation, however with savings, the savings replaces the loan fund. The women pay interest to themselves.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Coffee Kids was the first non-profit to work exclusively within the specialty coffee trade on behalf of small-scale coffee farmers and their families. Coffee Kids opened the doors for numerous sustainability movements, commercial as well as non-profit, to find a home in the specialty coffee trade, which in many ways has become characterized by its commitment to social responsibility at the origin of its supply chain. Coffee Kids continues to thrive today and is a sustainability leader in specialty coffee trade.

Providence, Rhode Island

Coffee Exchange's history began in 1977 as the heart of Providence Rhode Island's premier cookware store at the time, Cooks Connection. Coffee Exchange opened its own doors in 1984, as a small batch coffee roaster and has provided the expanding local and global neighborhoods with affordable fresh roasted sustainable coffee.All of Coffee Exchange's Green Coffee purchases support environmental sustainability by promoting organic agricultural practices and honest wages for farmers through fair trade pricing. All our decafs are Water Processed (using no chemicals).Coffee Exchange is the original home of two important coffee--focused non-profit organizations founded by Bill Fishbein: Coffee Kids, founded in 1988 and The Coffee Trust, founded in 2008. Through year-long projects - and at our annual New Years Day Fundraiser - we raise money to aid both of these organizations in their long-term commitments to helping coffee-farming families liberate themselves from their dependency on coffee for their livelihood and from the poverty that has so characterized their lives, and to help them build sustainable communities by supporting education, health care, food sovereignty and economic development.

Bs, Management

Education record