Monday 10th April marks the beginning of UK Coffee Week: seven days celebrating our love of coffee. The big idea is to raise much-needed funds for clean water and sanitation in coffee-growing communities around the world. The initiative is called Project Waterfall, and it’s run by the Allegra Foundation.
Since the first Coffee Week back in 2011, more than £600,000 has been raised and 24,000 people in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania have benefited from water free of disease.
And making a difference begins with as little as 5p per cup of coffee.
You can still take part!
You may run a coffee shop, bar or other food service organisation, or just be an employer with a commercial coffee machine and a lot of thirsty employees. What matters is that you can use your enjoyment of the coffee produced in poorer communities to make a difference. Not just to quality of life, but to saving lives and reducing poverty through clean water.
Even though registration is officially closed for this year’s UK Coffee Week, you can still get involved. In return for a small £25 registration fee, you’ll get fully branded campaign material to use within your business to raise awareness. To take part this year, send an email to Laura Newby at lnewby@allegra.co.uk.
It’s not just coffee communities abroad who win
It’s you, your business and your staff and customers too. Taking part in popular charitable initiatives boosts team morale, makes customers feel good about themselves, demonstrates your sense of corporate social responsibility and can be an excellent PR opportunity.
How do I raise funds?
It can be as simple as making a pledged donation for every cup of coffee sold or consumed. We like the idea of donating 5p or 10p from your proceeds, and asking each customer (or employee, if you don’t sell coffee commercially) whether they’d like to donate a matching amount in exchange for their delicious, fresh coffee.
That’s the easy, must-do starting point. You could also host networking events which require a donation, hold raffles, sell cakes and baked goods, come up with customer competitions, hold coffee workshops for keen customers, or even raise money through sponsored challenges.
The only limit is your imagination.
Visit www.ukcoffeeweek.com to find out more, whiz an email to lnewby@allegra.co.uk to register for fundraising, and plan an even bigger UK Coffee Week for April 2018!