Portland Roasting Coffee

In Papua New Guinea, we partnered with the owners of the Madan Estate to increase the quality of life of growers and their communities. The Madan Estate grows our peaberry coffee.

For this particular Farm Friendly Direct™ program, we are helping out with a Women’s Literacy project, which is a wide-ranging project that ...Aarlie Hull, the estate owner, has dreamed up. Her vision is to create an educational center that doubles as a community gathering spot. Here, adults can meet for literacy classes and community meetings. Hull also hopes to create a pre-school as well. She reports that there is no emphasis on early childhood education, hence a book drive to gather easy-to-read books and primers of all sorts.

Papua New Guinea experiences a high rate of illiteracy, and books are scarce. Hull has heard from the women in the community that books are high on their wish list. The enthusiasm to learn to read is evident, according to Hull. Therefore, the next logical step is to fill the bookshelves with books.

To help with that goal, Portland Roasting stepped in with the Ready to Read book drive. We simply asked customers to set-up collection boxes at their shops to collect books from their customers. We also collected books from walk-in customers at our Southeast Portland roastery and office.

In late fall, Portland Roasting will gather the collection boxes full of books from their customers and ferry them to the shipping container that will make its way to Papua New Guinea and into the hands of soon-to-be readers.

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