How did Amal Yemen come to be?
Amal Yemen began as a simple attempt to address a tragic paradox. Yemen is the historical birthplace of the coffee trade and played a critical role in the genesis of a coffee drinking culture that spread throughout the world. It is a guardian of ancient coffee genes that have long since vanished from the rest of the planet. Coffee cultivation there is practiced with exceptional skill and a reverence that dates back hundreds of years--many families have been taking care of coffee for ten generations or more. Yet coffee farmers in Yemen have been mostly excluded from the huge boom in Specialty Coffee that has swept the globe in the last twenty years.
Yemeni coffees are conspicuously absent from most Third Wave coffeeshop menus, and most coffee lovers around the world have never so much as tasted one. They are nearly invisible in the marketplace—encountering a Yemeni coffee to drink at a modern coffee bar is about as common as a blue whale sighting. The purpose of organising a global event was to do something about that, drawing attention to Yemen’s unique coffee industry and opening eyes to what it has to offer the coffee drinking public in the hope that new awareness would lead to opportunity for the thousands of farmers who hold treasure in their hands but rarely benefit from it.
As the project took shape it became clear that there was more it could accomplish, and that the urgency of the devastating situation in Yemen today demanded stronger action. The rural population in the Yemeni coffee lands are facing existential threats that cannot wait. It is estimated that more than 75% of the population is at extreme risk, and the UN has declared Yemen the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The acute daily suffering is so severe that to know about it and do nothing to try to help is morally indefensible.
The original goals of the project remain, and our intention to animate an audience of global consumers with a new understanding of Yemeni coffee as a means of creating opportunity for hundreds of thousands of farmers is still at its base. That will help tomorrow, but it is not enough given the profound needs of today. That’s why we are aiming to raise money to fund existing relief efforts underway now in Yemen that are essential to making sure tomorrow’s opportunities will have any relevance.
A large global coalition of coffee people, companies, artists and scholars have come together to rally support for Yemeni people. It is a collaborative effort, belonging to no one, relying on everyone. We are aiming to make a difference for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet today while sowing seeds for future opportunity.
