Lifeboost Coffee and Project Alianza: Closing the Rural-Urban Education Gap in Latin America
At Lifeboost, striving to bring you the healthiest coffee on the planet is our top priority.
But, that doesn’t just involve coffee beans.
Sure, we care about coffee, but if you’ve been a Lifeboost customer for long, you also know that we deeply care about the surrounding area where our coffee is grown as well.
- We support The Rainforest Trust to protect the plants and animals who live in our coffee regions.
- We support organic, sustainable farming practices to protect the land for generations to come.
- We support our farmers with a fair wage for their premium crop.
And, for a while now we have partnered with Project Alianza, “a community-driven initiative striving to close the rural-urban education gap in Latin America by building schools, training and upskilling rural women as educators, and providing experiential, interactive learning programs to children so that they may thrive beyond generational cycles of poverty.”
In America, it can be hard for us to understand the crisis facing children around the globe when our greatest struggles in education center around standardized testing criteria, policies regarding money shared between public, private, and charter school systems, and internet streaming issues for e-learning.
Don’t get me wrong, we understand that educators and children alike do share difficulties past these issues here in the states.
But, perhaps you, like me, will find yourself filled with a renewed heart of gratitude for what we take for granted as you journey with me to the cloud forests of Nicaragua where we’ll take a look at a small portion of the global education crisis and how it affects the children living on our coffee farms.
Lifeboost coffee is grown in extremely remote regions. Such areas, located in the beautiful, lush, mountainous cloud forests of Nicaragua provide elevation, shade, and ideal conditions for growing some of the healthiest, best tasting coffee.
However, while these areas are perfect for growing coffee, they are lacking some of the most important necessities for ensuring a thriving future to Central America and truly...to the world.
These areas lack what is needed to secure their future...our future. They lack access to safe and quality education for children of all ages.
For many years, children in these communities have received little to no education at all!
This is due to the fact that most children living in these regions simply live too far away to walk to school. And, for those with bus access, the expense of traveling by bus to and from school regularly is one that is far too steep.
For most, even a first-grade education is a luxury.
Without the opportunity for a quality education, a cycle of poverty becomes an unfortunate ritual, an unbroken circle.
And, lest any one of us be tempted to think that the education of children halfway around the world does not affect us personally, remember the following global contributions:
- Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Nikola Tesla was a key scientist whose wisdom is just as much credited with the discovery of electricity as Thomas Edison.
- Polish born Marie Curie’s love of learning was sparked at a young age. Her access to education that instilled this love propelled her discovery of radium and her contributions to finding treatments for cancer.
- Susan B. Anthony’s life was so impacted by education at a young age that she spent her early years giving back in the classroom as a teacher before going on to be a reformer of education, an abolitionist, labor activist, and a prominent voice for women’s rights in America.
Without education we rob the world of future leaders, innovators, scientists, engineers...we rob ourselves and our world of possibilities.
For more than 2 million children in the rural regions of Latin America, climate change, gang violence, and mass migration are real threats to their future.
But, possibly their greatest threat lies in their need for support and empowerment.
Education provides an answer to these needs!
Education not only provides skill. It provides hope, vision, opportunities, and solutions.
Every child deserves an education...
...their future, the future of these communities, the future of our whole world, depends on it!
So, what is Project Alianza making possible for the children living in these lush coffee lands of Latin America?
First, Project Alianza trains local women to be skilled educators, ultimately being the driving force to transform children’s education and create gender equity in rural areas. Focusing on community-centered approaches, Project Alianza then creates alliances with coffee farmers to build or use existing buildings in these communities to provide safe, dependable learning spaces for children and educators.
Project Alianza provides...
- access to safe places for children to learn
- literacy and health programs to improve learning
- scholarships for devoted students to continue their education
- training for women to develop themselves as professional educators
In the last 5 years, Project Alianza has impacted the lives of more than 20,000 children!
For each school built, the number of children in school increases, regular school attendance increases, the number of hours that children are reading increases, more local women are employed, and paths for bright futures are being forged!
Most of these students in this region are now the first members of their families to progress past the fifth grade!
Project Alianza is working to make education inequality a thing of the past.
Lifeboost is proud to partner with Project Alianza, supporting their dedicated efforts to educate the children who live in the coffee lands of Latin America, providing a secure and promising future for them and the world!
So, how can YOU get involved?
It's simple––just keep drinking coffee! Here, at Lifeboost, we donate a portion of our profits to Project Alianza and our other partners.
As you enjoy your morning brew, know that you are helping to fund education and other efforts around the world!