A year ago Colton Vandermolen and Kevin Bell, two tourism students from Malaspina University College, took six months off to study, live and work with a small community of organic coffee farmers in Costa Rica. They were the third group of students to accept this challenge as part of the “Heart of Gold” project created by their professor, Dr. David Robinson.

This project has had a powerful impact on the farmers and perhaps an even more powerful impact on Colton and Kevin. And now, through them, given a little luck and a lot of hard work, it will have a positive impact on many of us as well.

In the early 90s, a number of these coffee farmers began to realize that the chemicals used in the “conventional” farming method were having a negative effect on the health of their children and families. They also became more aware that it wasn’t a good thing to be clear cutting the rain forest to grow coffee.

Ten years later, they had developed seven certified organic coffee plantations where coffee was grown in the shade of banana, apple and orange trees and mixed with different kinds of berry plants. This gave the farmers a variety of income streams while being much more environmentally friendly to their land.

The Heart of Goal project has built a strong team including the collected knowledge of the university, its students,and the farmers; a team that is helping to support, maintain and grow these ecologically sound goals.

Colton and Kevin spent their first few months cutting tourist-friendly trails through the coffee plantations and later leading tours for European tourists. Their last couple of months were spent living with another family and helping them develop organic gardens.

Last June as they were leaving to come home, they were approached by a number of the organic farmers and asked if they would help market their coffee in Canada. They accepted the challenge and began selling the coffee at Farmers’ Markets in August under the company name, Bean Positive.

When you talk to these young men, the words you hear most often are “honour” and “ethics”. They are committed to honouring the primary producers they work with and to do so in a highly ethical way. What’s not to respect about that?

Over the fall, winter and spring, they continued to service the regular customers they made at the Farmers’ Markets (They deliver to your door) and worked on building a web site, which will take them a step closer to their eventual goal as described in their mission statement.

“To operate on behalf of organic farmers and craftspeople by promoting and distributing their completed products through direct-trade.”

Kevin and Colton stress that what they do is “Direct Trade” not “Fair Trade”. In Direct Trade, the farmers produce, process and package the finished product. In the Costa Rican case, the farmers pick, sun dry, and package the coffee in one pound bags and ship the finished product to Kevin and Colton who pay them $6 a pound.

Their eventual goal is to expand beyond coffee and begin to market products produced by other ethically strong small businesses. They expect their first partner to be a former wheat farmer in Saskatchewan who now produces hemp nuts, a product with many of the same positive qualities of flax seed oil

Right now Kevin and Colton are just managing to keep their heads above water as they struggle to make their passion a reality -- Remember they are tourism, not business students so they have a lot to learn.

If I had just recently retired and had a strong background in business and marketing, I’d love to mentor these two guys. What about you?