Today we are proud to announce our new fundraising campaign - The Shye School Project. Shye School is local to the Gishyita washing station in Rwanda (literally it’s about 200 yards from the coffee!) who we are happily working in relationship with for the third year in a row. We’ve been lucky enough to visit Gishyita, located on the east of Lake Kivu, each year since 2014 and are always blown away by the amazing coffees they continue to produce from this area.
This year we visited the nearby school just to get a richer feel for the community and an insight into what life is really like there. Built in the 1930s, the school is relatively large, with on average 60 pupils to a teacher. Children start attending from age 5 and aim to finish their education at 18. While the children seemed happy, we were shocked by the conditions of the school building itself. It is in desperate need of repairs and renovation and in some places where chunks of concrete fall from the decaying roof, the school is literally falling down around the children where they work and play. The floors are also very badly worn and many of the windows contain broken glass panes.
So, as we continue to rely on this community to bring us the delicious coffees we can bring to you, we are calling for your help to get the school rebuilt. We were thinking that the best way to do this is to keep buying their coffee! So if you check out the front page of the website you can click through to our page on Gishyita where with every purchase of 250g, 50p will be donated directly to funding the school build, and £1.50 from each 1kg purchase. We’ve also setup a Gofundme page with a bit more info if you’d like to donate directly, then go here. Also, if you’re in Brighton and stopping by Bond Street, you can try it as espresso or filter and the price will include a donation. Watch this space for more of our fundraising ideas!
Here are some photos of the school and Gishyita washing station:
