Our summer intern, Bridget, who leaves tomorrow.

Pretty exciting to see other companies with a vision and mission to change the world.

So we have a lot to update you all on! First of all, every Wednesday we have Wednesday meetings to pray about our direction, to recap what has happened over the past week and to discuss where we are headed this upcoming week. We have a lot of exciting projects coming up such as: finally relaunching our advertising (including this blog), designing shirts for you all to enjoy (and wear all day every day), releasing a brand spanking new website sometime soon, and making a trip to East Lansing, MI for a big campus event and some networking meetings.

While things are busy as ever, with construction to being soon expanding our seating at Ipsento and offices coming together, I (the intern) am finishing up my last week here at CA. It’s very bittersweet for me, exciting to get back to campus and finish up my last year at Michigan State, but sad to leave the people who have really become like a little family to me. Hopefully you will see a lot more happening in the Great Lakes State for CA soon as I will continue to be involved as a sort of campus rep.

There are a lot of things I could say about my experience here at Coffee Ambassadors, I’ve learned so much and had so many amazing opportunities to really make some things my own. It’s been such a blessing to work for people who truly value you as a person, employee, and sister in the Lord. Most of all, it was so amazing to be a part of this movement because I know Tim, Dave, Pam, and the whole crew will do such amazing things, and that they’re going to change the world.

So as my chapter here comes to a close, so many new chapters have just begun, and so many changes are beginning to take form. I encourage you, readers of this insanity that has been our blog, to pray. First and foremost for funds, we won’t be shy about the fact that we need $6000 in the next twelve days to pay for our Guatemalan coffee, and $26,000 in the next month to pay for bills, order more Guatemalan coffee, and to move forward with so many of the changes that we’ve been itching to make.

Thanks for dealing with my crazy little posts, and thanks to CA for the true blessing and amazing opportunity to be involved. I really do feel that God has shaped me and helped me to grow in so many ways this summer and I couldn’t have done it without my CA family.

The luckiest girl alive,

Bridget Quigley (former CA summer intern & projects/events coordinator)

Coffee Ambassadors is a coffee company on a mission. Not a mission to make a lot of money, not a mission to become the next big chain of coffee shops, no our mission is much different than that. We are here because of the coffee farmers. The coffee industry is worth $80 billion dollars, and that makes sense. Think about how many cups you consume each week, month, year, and multiply that by about $3. Now take that same number of drinks, and multiply it by about 3 cents, that is how much each farmer makes. Three cents for your average three dollar latte, halfcaf, americano.

Coffee Farmers can often be found in some of the poorest countries in the world, for example many African countries are involved in less than 1% than world trade, but the continent in itself contains over 75% of the worlds natural resources. Coffee is no exception, in most cases farmers grow and harvest the coffee, then it is purchased by a buyer, packaged and shipped to a distributer, then bought by coffee companies and sold in their shops.

Coffee Ambassadors purchases coffee from farmers we have relationships with, or from friends who do. For example, in Guatemala we purchase coffee from the Martin family. We flew down last summer to meet them, see their farms first hand, and then buy coffee from them for a much higher price than any big companies are going to pay. Our Ugandan blend we purchase from our friends at Crop To Cup, who have flown out to a in Mbale, Uganda and developed relationships with the farmers they purchase from there. We hope to visit their farm ourselves soon.

We hope that you can join us in our journey and listen to our stories along the way. Thanks for reading.

-The CA Team