More than 600 years ago in northeastern Ethiopia, Muslim merchants trekked through the mountains to export the world’s first cultivated coffee beans -- thus beginning what has since become a multi-billion dollar industry. But 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 us for help, prompting us 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. Thus is born On the Ground, a new effort to bring the gift of education to our coffee growing friends. Contact Chris at chris@highergroundstrading.com to sponsor a student today. To see photos and read interviews from the families of the community, visit our Oromia Photo Project page.