Southeastern Wesley Receives Rare Coffee Beans from Brazil
Southeastern’s Wesley Foundation has received their monthly supply of rare coffee beans from Brazil.
The Wesley exists to serve the students, faculty, and staff of Southeastern Louisiana University mind, body and soul, according to Sam Hubbard, minister of the Wesley Foundation. “Mostly, I just want to help make God free for people, and people free for God.”
The foundation is one of three church organizations on Southeastern campus that helps feed those in need with free lunch once a week, as they are scheduled on Wednesdays. The complex also has a chapel, where prayer circles and meetings are usually held.
It also serves as a coffee house, where people from around campus and Hammond could come and grab coffee and snacks.
One of the Wesley’s meetings, which are usually held around the first weekend of the month, was held online with managers that work for Cafe Caboclo, a coffee company that originated in Brazil.
The company is famous for making many types of coffee beans, but have been known to sell rare Arabica coffee beans that they make to North American companies and organizations.
According to Sara Sadowsky, staff member of the coffee shop, the special coffee beans take five to seven years to prepare. The beans come from coffee trees, where it takes roughly three to four years to grow. The fruit and seeds are then carefully picked, by being passed through a pulping machine to separate the skin and pulp from the bean. The beans are than processed by weight as the beans pass through water channels, where light beans float and heavier beans sink to the bottom. The beans are then dried, milled, weighed and bagged before being exported for consumer needs.
After talks with Cafe Caboclo, the Wesley foundation made an agreement with the business to receive the beans for free, in exchange for a yearly visit to Brazil to help out those in need around the country.
The coffee beans are shipped in potato sacks by truck from Salvador, Brazil to Maracay, Venezuela, where the bags are then flown to Houston, Texas. The beans are then truck-delivered to the Wesley foundation.
Kairos Koffeehouse has been receiving and using those same rare coffee beans since 2017. The Wesley foundation has received over $75,000 over the past three years, where most of the profits have been earned by selling coffee. 65% of those profits go to local charities. 15% pays for the staff that work at the shop. 20% pays for improvements of the complex, chapel, rent, bills, meeting equipment, books, and other useful supplies that members of the Wesley foundation uses.
For more information about the coffee beans, or if you would like to purchase some of their coffee, visit their website and go visit Kairos Koffeehouse yourself!
