St. James Trip to Haiti Supports Coffee Farmers
This January, parishioners from St. James Catholic Church in Arlington Heights will travel to Haiti to support fair trade with local coffee growers.
The parish has partnered with Just Haiti, a nonprofit organization that pays local farmers a fair price for their coffee to improve living wages (www.justhaiti.org). Just Haiti packages and ships the farmers' coffee to North America and then gives all profits directly back to the growers and their families.
In order to be a part of the program, farmers must form an association and submit monthly financial reports. It has shown to be a sustainable way to change poverty at the local level in the chronically impoverished nation.
The St. James group will arrive in Port Au Prince, Haiti on Saturday, Jan. 17. There they will meet with Fr. Pierre Pascal, one of the founders of the Just Haiti program. They will also travel to Fonde Tortue, the location of the first coffee association that works with Just Haiti and see first-hand the coffee fields and de-pulping plants that have been built with Just Haiti loans.
The trip includes visits to schools throughout the diocese of Les Cayes. Pascal has built gardens in six of the schools and hired an agronomist to teach the children about farming. One of the schools has a broken water well and St. James is raising funds to help repair it. The parishioners will distribute notebooks, pens, pencils and erasers to children as well. They will return home on Saturday, Jan. 24.
For more information about the St. James trip to Haiti, please contact Kathy McGourty at rmcgourty@aol.com or contact the St. James parish at 224-345-7200 or email parishoffice@stjamesah.org.
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