Fresh off the heels of my first visit to Guatemala, I can’t stop thinking about the coffee producers I met while traveling with Cooperative Coffees. It’s as though my first experience in the country is the new lens through which I see life. So, as we prepare to celebrate Earth Day back at Café Campesino in the U.S., I realize that some of the basic tenets I associate with environmentally responsibility are now translated through my “Guatemala experience.”

Through Matt Johnson’s office window a storm brews each day beginning around 11 am. Until a few days again, workers on both sides of Matt’s window pane expected to have the same rights. The irony is that now those outside the SERRV offices are in danger of losing the rights that SERRV (and other Fair Traders) demand as a tool in the fight against world poverty.

Immersed in El Salvador working with small farmers Monika had a conversation with Jonathan Rosenthal, co-founder of Equal Exchange, which would impact her life for years to come, it was her first exposure to this concept of “fair trade”. At the time it sounded kind of crazy to her…. Little did she imagine that several years later she’d be working in Chiapas, Mexico facilitating this crazy new concept “fair trade”!