Great Indoor Folk Festival ~ Feb 12, 2012
Higher Grounds Third Annual Holiday Trunk Show, Silent Auction and Benefit Concert to raise funds for an Ethiopian School.
Friday, Dec. 18th Higher Grounds Trading Co. will host their third annual Holiday Trunk Show & Artists Market, plus a live concert and benefit auction. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., more than a dozen local artisans will sell their wares in our roastery, allowing you the perfect opportunity to holiday shop for locally made, sustainable, one-of-a-kind items, like clothing, jewelry, and more. Throughout the day, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., they will host a silent auction featuring items from local businesses and artists, capped off with an evening of live music by our friends May Erlewine & Seth Bernard with the Abominable Snowmen—featuring Joshua Davis and Dominic Davis (from beloved Michigan roots band, Steppin' In It) & Michael Shimmin. Proceeds from the $12 ticket to the show and silent auction will support the construction of a secondary school in the coffee-growing regions of Yrgacheffe, Ethiopia—one of the communities from which Higher Grounds purchases coffee.
In modern-day Ethiopia, despite the country’s coffee exports accounting for nearly 60 percent of the national GDP, many coffee farmers and their families live on the edge of survival. Education, health care, and access to water are all in very limited supply. In the Yrgacheffe region, where some of the world’s most unique and sought-after coffees originate, little more than half the region’s children complete primary school. The adult literacy rate is 36 percent. Life expectancy is 53 years.
But at the Ethiopian fair trade coffee cooperative of Negele Gorbitu, in the town of Afursa Waro, coffee farmers are taking their future into their own hands. They’ve used the premiums from the sale of their fair trade and organic coffee beans to build a health clinic and primary school. These were big steps, but they’re still not enough: the closest secondary school is a five-mile walk away, and the primary school is already overfilled with students with far too few school supplies.
The farmers of Negele Gorbitu have asked Higher Grounds for help, prompting the fair trade and organic coffee company to begin an intensive fundraising mission to raise $50,000 to build a secondary school and furnish both schools with proper school supplies. Join us in our campaign to bring the gift of education to the children of the Negele Gorbitu coffee co-op.
You can also send a donation for the school to:
Higher Grounds Trading Co.
(Make checks out to "On the Ground"
806 Red Drive
Suite 150
Traverse City, Michigan, 49684
For more information contact: Chris Treter 231.922.9009
Good Morning World by photoshoparama,
