It’s been amazing to get such a positive response from people since we took our first steps on the path to setting up the Colombian Coffee Company. Yes, the road might be long and the ride might be bumpy - but it will be worth it!
As a first measure of success, we have been invited to the London School of Economics next February to share our story.
I still have the photographs I took of a family in Colombia who had been displaced from their land in El Magdalena Medio by paramilitaries. They were living in a shanty village outside Cartagena de Indias in the Caribbean. When I got the children together to take some photos, I promised them that one day I would come back to show them the photo. And that I´d do something to help their dad Jose. The family was from a mountainous area, and Jose was a coffee grower by trade and had never seen the sea before he came to Cartagena. He was too afraid of it to take-up fishing like the local men, so he and his five children would go to the streets of Cartagena de Indias to sell Tintos (a short, sweet, black coffee) instead. And Jose did really know how to make splendid Tintos!
I am finally getting ready to go back and find those children, and this time I will go as a social entrepreneur. I can tell Jose’s children that I studied Business Innovation in London and that in London people really love coffee. I know how fortunate I am to have had the chance to study business in one of the most exciting cities in the world.
A simple idea born in London: to connect coffee lovers with coffee growers and by doing this we can support Jose’s family and hopefully many more.
We will keep you informed. I promise.
