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Alternative Grounds Celebrates 13th Anniversary
Last July, Alternative Grounds celebrated their 13th anniversary and we thought this would be a great opportunity to let you know a little bit about their impressive list of ongoing projects. From Amnesty International to an original postcard project, read all about the great new projects that the good folks at Alternative Grounds have been up to lately.
Alternative Grounds are supporters of Amnesty International and participated in their “Taste for Justice” event. They developed a "Taste for Justice" dark blend and donated 25% of the sale of the blend throughout the month of June. This participation helped raising funds for Amnesty’s human rights research and campaigns, especially for their work to stop violence against women. Alternative Grounds also raises funds on a continual basis for the Guatemalan Womens Survivor Network in Guatemala City through the sale of Alternative Grounds travel mugs.
Alternative Grounds is also active in their local community. They regularly raise funds for Romero House, a refugee settlement project in their neighborhood. Linda Burnside also told us that Alternative Grounds is involved in helping mobilize public support to save their local community movie house by issuing a matching dollar challenge: “We matched our customers donations to the project and challenged other local businesses to do the same!”
During the Fair Trade Weeks events in May, Alternative Grounds came out with the original idea of a postcard project. They made postcards available for customers to write to the coop that produces their favourite coffee to let them know how much they enjoy their coffee, along with any other thought, question, or comment they wanted to express. This really gives the customer a chance to connect with the coffee producer, and to close the link between these two ends of the coffee supply chain. Linda loved this idea and wants to repeat it next year, in a more focused version to get more people participate.
Everybody at Alternative Grounds is also excited about a new project that will be starting in the fall. They are beginning a series that plans to highlight the producer coops they work with, the first of which to be presented will be COOPAC from Rwanda.
Linda Burnside and Alternative Grounds’ staff are really proud of their 13th anniversary of business and 
they continue to invent creative projects that keeps them active in their community and within Cooperative Coffees. Linda told us that the key to be successful in such a business is to have persistance and passion. If your project is close to your heart, it pulls you along and out of disappointment or discouragement.
Long live Alternative Grounds!
