((PKG)) COFFEE LOST BOYS -- SUDAN
((Banner: Coffee with Impact))
((Reporter/Camera: June Soh))
((Adapted by: Randall Taylor))
((Map: United States / Washington, D.C.))
((Banner: A former Lost Boy – a child displaced by Sudan’s civil war – now runs a socially conscious coffee business))
((MANYANG KHER, OWNER, 734 COFFEE))
700 million people drink coffee every day. So we are hoping that through coffee, and not just any coffee, a great coffee, a best coffee that comes from that region where refugees live, will be able to reach more people. Then they will be able to learn about the refugee crisis and the refugee social entrepreneur right. A cup of 734 coffee can buy….This cup can buy one fishing net. Also, it can buy pens, can help with our scholarship system to send kid to school.
We want to focus on ‘aid-free’, meaning you want to give them the tools to help themselves.
((MEGAN MURPHY, OWNER, CAPITAL CITY CONFECTIONERY))
The customers love it. Whenever they find out about the project, about the mission, they connect right with it. Coffee tastes delicious and so it’s a win-win on both sides. You get to enjoy coffee and at the same time, be part of a bigger project.
((MANYANG KHER, OWNER, 734 COFFEE))
734 is a geographical coordination of refugee camp in Ethiopia where 250,000 refugees live. I know the struggle those refugees face every day. When I was three years old, my village was attacked and then it was burned down by the northern part of the government. So, we the children, when our village was burned, and we separated from our parents, we’d run and run to Ethiopia and then we become refugees.
((Banner: At 16, Kher came to the US as an unaccompanied minor refugee))
((MANYANG KHER, OWNER, 734 COFFEE))
Too many children are dying along the way. You’re in fear every day because you think you’re going to die too. You see kids dying of hunger because they don’t have food. You see kids dying of cholera. You see kids dying from disease. You see kids just running away from refugee camps. They just wanted to go to a place to be home and they die there on the way. That’s why we give a fishing net, because they can go to the river and fish for themselves. If you build more community gardens, they can grow their own food. If you also build a water well, now you create a community because they can get their water there. They can grow their own food there. They can also open their own market there. You know, like, two hundred thousand refugees is a market. A lot of different NGOs went to Gambella because of the advocate work we’ve done within them. But the thing that we’ve actually done, give the people fishing nets, water wells, all those things made a huge, huge difference within the system of refugees.
