US Labor Dept. Awards $5 Million Grant to Address Child Labor and Gender Inequality in Ethiopia
Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown.
The United States Department of Labor is awarding a $5 million cooperative agreement with the multinational Atlanta-based nonprofit CARE for a project designed to reduce child labor and improve gender equality in the Ethiopian coffee sector.
Specifically, the grant is part of the 50-month She Thrives project funded by the U.S. Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), which is focused on work to strengthen the coffee sector in Ethiopia through a gender-focused approach.
ILAB says the project will provide direct services to 10,300 people in 10 districts within the geographic regions of Gedeo and Oromia, where the majority of Ethiopian coffee is produced.
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Hello Em Việt Coffee & Roastery in Seattle. All images courtesy of Hello Em Việt Coffee & Roastery.
Opened last month, the coffee shop features a fluid-bed coffee roaster that kicks out Vietnamese robusta coffees for use in modern and traditional Vietnamese iced and hot coffee drinks served alongside banh mi sandwiches and sweet mochi treats.
According to the Hello Em team, popular drinks include the ca phe sua da (iced coffee with condensed milk), ca phe trung (egg cloud coffee) and espresso drinks coming from a custom-branded, Seattle-made Synesso MVP Hydra espresso machine.
Colorful craft pieces and Vietnamese artwork can be found throughout the shop, where currently an explosion of red decorations is up for the lunar new year celebration, and a permanent info-mural on an adjacent wall provides information on the coffee industry of Vietnam.
Daily Coffee News file photo by Nick Brown
Cup of Excellence (ACE) organizer the Alliance for Coffee Excellence is partnering with the multinational agricultural traceability company Oritain to verify the origin of coffees in the green coffee competition and auction program.
According to Portland, Oregon-based ACE, Oritain will be maintaining a database using samples of coffees that have been purchased at auction. The database will create a kind of fingerprint for future traceability as it relates to where specifically coffees are grown, as opposed to the kind of DNA fingerprinting that would verify things such as variety or cultivar.
In a response to a DCN inquiry, ACE said that while there has been no evidence of counterfeiting in regard to coffees submitted to COE competitions, the partnership with Oritain is designed to give producers and coffee buyers alike confirmation that competition coffees are authentic throughout their supply chain journey.
The Lost Sock Roasters coffee shop in Washington D.C.’s Takoma neighborhood. Photo by Tim Casey (IG: @timtastey), courtesy of Lost Sock Roasters.
Roughly two and a half years after first announcing plans to open a cafe inside Washington D.C.’s recently renovated Takoma Theatre Building, Lost Sock Roasters has found itself at last serving drinks and food to the public.
The company opened the 900-square-foot shop at the beginning of February, offering a comfortable modern interior with bright white walls, white counters and a cool blue Slayer Steam espresso machine in the Northwest D.C. neighborhood.
The Lost Sock Roasters coffee shop in Washington D.C.’s Takoma neighborhood. Photo by Tom Sandner (IG: @tomsandner), courtesy of Lost Sock Roasters.