Java for Jesus? Christian groups bring jobs, Gospel to Uganda
Pastor Dale Morgan
Java for Jesus? Christian groups bring jobs, Gospel to Uganda*
FRANKLIN PARK, Pa. (AP) — Thirty workers at a Ugandan coffee farm
thousands of miles from here plant the seeds of a venture that allows a
group of western Pennsylvania Christians to bring jobs and the Gospel to
one of Africa's poorest countries.
The non-profit Christian East African and Equatorial Development Trust,
which runs Ugandan Gold Coffee, is a network of Americans, Ugandans,
coffee shops and distributors who plant, harvest, blend and sell coffee
grown on a 36-acre farm in Uganda's Bunyoro-Kitara region, a former
kingdom that has strong Anglican roots.
The venture has created more than two dozen jobs in an area where about
60% of people are unemployed. Profits are returned to Uganda to help
meet basic needs. This year, the money went to dig 11 water wells.
"We wanted to create jobs over there, we wanted to create
self-sustaining income," said Worth Helms, a retired insurance broker
who stores boxes of the coffee in his suburban Pittsburgh home. "We
wanted to teach people how to manage an entity like this."
Christians, Muslims and animists can use the wells or anything else that
is the product of the coffee farm's profits, though the non-profit has
chosen a location for its work that is largely Christian. An added plus
to the venture is bringing Christianity to more people, Helms said.
Today, the coffee can be purchased at two Pennsylvania coffee shops and
one in Ohio. In addition, the Helms family sells the coffee online, and
even turned their garage into a mini-packaging plant before Christmas to
fill all the gift orders.
Jessica Buteraba, the Ugandan supervisor of the farm, makes $38 per
month, high by Ugandan standards. The job has allowed her to build a new
house with solar panels and pay school fees for her five children.
"The farm is different because ... it provides jobs, not just
donations," improving the lives of 30 full-time workers and 100 migrants
hired during the six-week harvest season, Buteraba said in a telephone
interview.
A landlocked country of 24.4 million people in eastern Africa, Uganda is
one of the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated per capita
income of $300 per year. The country's workforce has been decimated by
the effects of the AIDS epidemic that has ravaged sub-Saharan Africa,
with some 1.9 million children having lost one or both parents to the
disease.
That number, along with the poverty Westerners see in Uganda, have
helped attract Christian groups not only to Uganda, but to other
countries in Africa — viewed by many evangelicals as the last frontier
for spreading Christianity.
"There is the wide-based understanding that Christianity is growing
there and that it will grow even more with charitable help from the
United States and Canada," said Candy Gunther-Brown, an associate
professor of religious students at Indiana University.
Most of the organizations — from the well-known World Vision to smaller
ones, such as Global Awakening based in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania —
donate food, clothing and other perishables. Missions assist in
constructing homes, digging wells, teaching children and in spreading
the word of Jesus, Gunther-Brown said.
But what makes the Pittsburgh-based Ugandan Gold enterprise so unusual
is that the coffee farm gets most of its revenues from sales, not from
donations, said Chris Scheitle, a Pennsylvania State University doctoral
candidate who is doing his dissertation on Christian non-profit groups.
Ugandan Gold is also different from fair-trade enterprises concerned
with paying workers fair wages. Helms said his coffee company is more
successful at getting revenue back into Uganda — sending back $6.25 from
every $8 pound bag sold in the United States, five times more than the
average fair-trade business.
"The miracle ... is that all these people could come together and work
and have the best-managed and -run farm," said Thad Cox, a businessman
from Dallas who has acted as the farm's foreman since its establishment
in 1999.
Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza, 38, a Ugandan who got her doctorate in
ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh and works closely with
the Pittsburgh-based group that runs Ugandan Gold, said the coffee farm
is more helpful to Uganda than the traditional charitable model.
Missionary work should be "about enhancing people's capacity to sustain
through their own lives," Nannyonga-Tamusuza said. "It means that
whatever is created it needs to be thought about so that people can
manage it. They need to empower them, otherwise we perpetuate dependency."
Helms first visited Uganda in 1999. Upon his return, he, his wife,
Janet, and four others decided they wanted to start a long-term business
there. Coffee was chosen because it makes up 80% of Uganda's export
revenue, he said.
"If you had asked me in 1998 would I be starting a business in Uganda in
1999 I would have said you were crazy," Helms said.