For the second year, the Hourglass Café will open in Faunce House, offering coffee drinks and pastries for hungry customers.
Previously housed in the Bear's Lair, the student-run, non-profit café moved into the Underground in the fall of 2003. Now, one year after opening in its new location, Zara Ahmed '06, the cafe's general manager, said her staff is ready for another successful year.
Last semester, the café made about $1,000 for OXFAM America, according to Ahmed.
"That's pretty remarkable if you consider that we make about only 10 cents on every cup of coffee we sell," she said. By using volunteers to run the café, costs are kept to a bare minimum.
All proceeds from the café go to OXFAM America, a famine-relief organization.
"Oxfam America differs from many NGOs in that it seeks to start and promote sustainable developmental projects," Ahmed said. Sustainable projects are those that involve teaching farmers in other countries skills like crop rotation in order to preserve soil.
Fair-trade coffee is another sustainable project, Ahmed said. By forming co-ops, farmers can bypass the smugglers that once oppressed them and sell their products at market price, increasing their profits twofold without raising the purchasing price of the coffee.
Those farmers who are not able to work with co-ops "perform back-breaking labor just to sell coffee beans to coyotes at unfairly low prices," Ahmed said.
"That's where the Hourglass comes in," she said. "We buy and sell only fairly traded products."
The menu at the Hourglass includes coffee, tea, hot chocolate and snack foods and baked goods bought from socially conscious distributors.
The Hourglass Café reopens Tuesday and will be open Sunday through Thursday. Hours have yet to be determined. Students wishing to volunteer at the café should contact Ahmed at Zara_Ahmed@Brown.edu.
Herald staff writer Miles Hovis '07 can be reached at herald@browndailyherald.com.
