Rich partnership – Area residents from Spokane and North Idaho join mission to aid Ethiopian farmers through business partnership

Slogans on packages of locally roasted Ethiopian coffee read: “Creating Solutions. Changing Lives.” Some Inland Northwest residents are marketing the arabica coffee through a partnership with Ethiopian farmers. Their relationship goes beyond Java, however.

Treva Lind
Correspondent

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=021404&ID=s1487070&cat=section.business

Eight people from Spokane and North Idaho will travel next week to Ethiopia with an unusual business and holistic approach to help Ethiopians become self-sufficient in health, business, Christian ministry and education.

They’re doing this with a nonprofit group called New Covenant Foundation and a for-profit business, Dominion Trading Co., that is returning 60 percent of net profits from coffee sales to Ethiopia — through the foundation and farmers’ profit-sharing. The foundation also relies on donations and grants.

"It provides an integrated holistic approach so that not only are we helping them economically by paying them a higher price for their coffee, but we’re also helping them address other social, health and education needs," said foundation president Mike Stemm of Liberty Lake, who first traveled to the country in 2001.

Coffee is a huge part of the Ethiopian economy and culture.

"If coffee growing goes poorly for them, they don’t have enough money to buy food," said Craig Meredith of Post Falls, a co-founder and agricultural engineering consultant.

"They are some of the poorest paid coffee farmers in the world. The only way for a hospital to succeed is if the coffee farmers are making enough

money to pay for services. They need clean water, health, education, spiritual growth. It’s all integrated."

The foundation now has support from the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C., a large group of U.S. Ethiopians, and more than 100 people involved around North America, Stemm said.

With this trip, the group is seeking to buy coffee beans more directly from farmers in the southern Rift Valley region with fewer middle men, Meredith said, to bring farmers higher prices. They’re also helping with sustainable agriculture and coffee-growing production.

The group now buys through a West Coast coffee importer, has the beans roasted at Post Falls’ Doma Coffee Roasting Co. and sells the coffee through an Internet site, at churches and to fund-raising groups.

Next week’s trip also focuses on two other goals: meeting health needs and supporting Ethiopians who desire to do Christian evangelism.

One team will visit hospitals and gather facts for a future health facility staffed by Ethiopians.

"They have some very basic health needs like assistance at birth, training on sanitation, immunizations — things we consider basic to life," said Jan Howard, a Spokane Valley physical therapist going with the group.

Howard, who has a master’s degree in international health, described the country’s high infant and child mortality rates as well as poor access to care.

"We’re on a fact-finding mission. We might have brilliant ideas that are inappropriate to their needs and belief system. We need to find out what their ideas are."

Rock Stewart of Post Falls, a His Place Church pastor, echoed the need to explore what’s appropriate.

"What can we do where there’s no electricity, no phones and no roads?" he said. "There’s a whole lot of cultural stuff that we have to be very careful about."

"We want them to have their dignity. God made them and he had them born in Ethiopia. But Ethiopians want to compete in the world."

A pastors team will meet with southern region elders of the Kale Hewot (Word of Life) Church, with about 400,000 Christians in that area and 3.5 million in the country.

This elders group, most of them coffee farmers, first proposed the broad-based support when Stemm, Meredith, Stewart and others visited in 2001.

"When we met with the elders, they established a four-pronged approach for evangelism and outreach, business, education and health," said Spokane Valley resident Doug Wieber, a pastor at His Place Church. He’s also returning next week.

"As we have built a relationship with them, what we want to do is help them accomplish their goals and not place our goals on them."

Werku Golle, a Kale Hewot Church southern region leader, had stayed four years ago in Post Falls when his wife and son had area surgeries.

Coeur d’Alene orthopedic surgeon Duane Anderson did a knee operation for Golle’s wife, Halleluia, and later joined the foundation’s health team. He will travel with them near Dilla and do surgeries at a Sodo hospital.

Anderson has funded training for five Ethiopian nurses in Sodo so they can return to the Dilla area.

"Werku and Halleluia relayed to me their prayer of starting a hospital in their area," Anderson said. "They have set aside a piece of land to build a hospital. We will see how we can help them."

Others Ethiopia-bound for about 15 days include Stemm, Meredith, Stewart, Fourth Memorial Church Senior Pastor John Repsold, and Arizona and Gig Harbor groups.

A retired Kaiser manager, Stemm described his 2001 trip as life-changing. He said hurdles remain in entering a long-standing world coffee trade, but he’s encouraged by the doors already opened.

"As Christians and Americans, I believe we have a responsibility to share our wealth and knowledge with our brothers. I learned from my trip that my brothers include those in Ethiopia as well as Liberty Lake.

"It is our intent that over time these people become independent from foreign assistance. Our dream is to go far beyond that region into other areas of Ethiopia and to replicate this model in other developing countries."

Despite poverty, disease and drought, Stemm said the Ethiopians "are some of the most joyful and loving people I’ve ever met."

Wieber also warmly described the region’s people.

"These are people who have very little if anything in terms of material goods but they have a deep love for the Lord and for each other."

"We can learn from them what it means to be men and women of faith."

•For more information, go online to http://www.newcovenantfoundation.org and http://www.dominiontrading.com or call (509) 255-1212.