after hours coffee house handout

8/8/2019 After Hours Coffee House Handout

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Featured Drinks

YumkinMilkshake

* pumpkin avor* vanilla ice cream* sprinkled cinnamon

Lava TropicsSmoothie* peach sorbet

* pineapple juice* all-natural coconut avor* blended ice

Who are We?After Hours is a church-runministry that runs everyThursday night from 9:00p.m.to, well, whenever we want!Our focus is to ministerto Shippensburgs collegecommunity to draw themaway from the alcohol sceneon campus.

We usually host livebands, both local and out-of-town, and our sponsor church,the First Church of God,donates baked goods everyweek and funds the coffees,

teas, and other products weserve.By serving the

community, we hope to drawpeople closer to Christ by ourministrys program. Everyonewho works at After Hours isa volunteer either from thechurch, the university, orlocal vonunteers. If you seean apron, talk to us! Werealways looking for someone

new to meet.Some of the weeklyvolunteers are Phil and LindaySchiavoni, Matt Ramsay,Beverly, and Josh Neil.

Continued Inside

Fair Trade 2

Statistics 3

Volunteers 4

ssue #1November 2010Created by Brandon B. Smith

After HoursCoffee House

After Hoursmilkshakes, espresso, tea, & love

Coffee House

Did you knowFair trade has beenaround since the 1940sand supports about800,000 farmers. Itallows farmers toearn three to ve

times as much as theywould make throughconventional markets.

Although it isselling less than theaverage price, it is

trying to set a standardfor which all coffee

must be sold, similarto the United Statesminimum wage.

FCOGs Sundays

8:30 a.m. Traditional Service

9:17 a.m. College Bible Study

(In The Annex building)

11:00 a.m. Contemporary

Worship Service

7:15 p.m. Evening Worship

First Church of God


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Coffee is the second most traded com-

modity in the world second only tooil, followed by a close third of grains,such as wheat, corn, and rice. Coffee ac-counts for as much as 80% of the GDPfor countries between the tropics of Cap-ricorn and Cancer. Needless to say, it hasa signicant impact on theglobal economy.

Economist Adam

Smith wrote that theInvisible Hand ofEconomics will take careof business, bringing abalance to the marketplaceby self-regulating. Itappears as though the Invisible Handhas left many families starving in itswake since farmers are incapable ofkeeping up with the low prices fetched

at the New York Stock Exchange. As aresult, prices for coffee remain lowerthan they need to be to support the peoplewho grow coffee. The consequences aresignicant. Fair trade operates a bargainingsystem enabling a certain level of trans-parency for farmers: it provides moneyup front for crops rather than a paycheck

afterwards, sets a minimum price per

pound of coffee, and seeks to encourageethical practices. Fair trade doesnt onlysupport coffee, but other agriculturalproducts such as cocoa, wine, and sugar

Farmers who operate outside offair trade prices are at a great risk of

losing the money they in-vest in their crops. Thosewith fair trade buyers

rid them of that risk bygiving them multiple-year contracts. Since theprices uctuate heavilyfarmers are never sure ifthey will receive prot on

the funds they originally invested.For instance, the price of coffee

prices from the mid-late 90s droppedabout 50 percent by the turn of the cen-

tury and remains unstable to this day.The way some farmers avoid this insta-bility is by diversifying their crops byplanting either different kinds of coffee

FAIR, FREE and DIRECT Article by Matt Ramsay

After HoursCoffee House

The price of coffee

is not determined bythe growers, but bythe New York Stock

Exchange


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3 After HoursCoffee House

Its Eco-friendly!

Fair trade is doing more than raisingthe minimum price of agriculturalgoods, but it institutes a healthyand almost ethical treatment of theplants themselves. According to The

Guardian, a popular U.K. newspaper,

fair trade has cut down on its farmersuse of pesticides down by 80 percent inthe past 10 years, while some farmershave gone chemical-free.

Fair trade also promotes shade growncoffee, which allows the trees to grow ina more natural environment under the

canopy of trees, which results in more

bird habitats, less need for pesticides,and less forest disruption.

Coffee Statistics:Prices and Distribution

Avg $/lb = $2.00

FT $/lb = $1.31

FT Organic = $1.51

FT Imported = +$0.10/lb

USA sells for = $9-12/lb

1 coffee tree = 1 lb/yr

1lb/coffee = 30.5 cups

2 cups coffee/day for 1 yr = 730 cups

730 cups = 18 trees

USA = 2.3 billion lbs/yr

or different agricultural products. How-ever, many of them are not nanciallytable enough to begin diversifying theirrops to begin with, thus the farmersontinually lose money.

Although fair trade is benecial topoor farmers, it does have some aws.Farmers typically only receive a percent-age of the money paid for the pound ofoffee, and accountability in this area isacking. The fair trade minimum prices also, in my opinion, still far too low to

make any ethical stand.Perhaps a more effective method of

getting more money to farmers has beenhrough direct trade or relationship cof-

ee. While this method has fewer sub-cribers, and is largely unregulated, itelies on coffee purchasers to be in rela-ionship with farmers and cuts out the

middleman. Whatever money the mid-dleman would have taken can then bepaid to the farmers. This can result in aignicant increase in farmers prots.

However, due to direct tradesvoluntary nature and lack of regulation,

t has been difcult to trust justompanies who claim to be direct trade.

Some companies such as SmithsonianBird Friendly, Kapeh-UTZ, 4Cs Coffee,and the Rainforest Alliance all claim tobe eco-friendly and direct trade, but theyare not held responsible by a third party,uch asFairtrade Labeling Organizationsnternational (FLO), which puts the Fair

Trade label on agricultural products.On the other side of the fence fromair and direct trading is free trade.

There is no xed price for how muchree trade farmers get paid; therefore,

their income can be unstable depend-ing on their buyer because it changesevery year. Free trade offers no contractto farmers, which can leave them highand dry from one year to the next. Thisis what fair trade ghts against.


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4After HoursCoffee House

The VolunteersPhil Schiavon

pictured: Matt Ramsay, CCO

Phil has workedas the CampusMinister for FCOGfor the past sixyears, and is nowspeaking regularlyat Christian Fel-lowship. He gradu-ated from ShipU in2004 with a degree

in Mathematics Ed with a baseba

coaching minor. Needless to say, Phloves baseball. Phil also enjoys fri

bee, pumpkin pie, and board games.When ending a phone conve

sation with his buddies, instead goodbye, they will say, Baseball!

Phil works with the Coalition foChristian Outreach (CCO), which iswonderful campus ministry organzation that has won the title of BeChristian Workplace from Christianity Today for four straight years!

...Free, Fair and Direct contd from pg 3

in recent years, a few new labels havearisen to compete in the coffee market:Rainforest Alliance, Kapeh-UTZ, Smith-sonian Bird-Friendly, and 4Cs Coffee. Al-though these companies appear to be eco-

friendly andFocused on serving the farmers, they arenot held to a higher authority and are notguaranteed to be what they say they are.Fairtrade Labeling Organizations Inter-national (FLO) is the third-party that cer-ties agricultural products as fair trade,and these previously listed companies arenot associated with them.

In the end, it is up to the consum-er to decide how he or she thinks coffeeought to be grown and how the farmersought to be treated. There are plenty ofmiddlemen between the consumer andthe farmer, but the consumer is the voice,the Invisible Hand, that speaks for thecoffee farmers. After Hours Coffee House is current-ly using premium fair trade and organic

coffees from around the world. These aregourmet coffees, which are fresh (usuallybrewed within a week of roasting) andfull of avor.

after hours coffee house handout

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