Afternoon Coffee with Cugina Elizabeth and a Giveaway!

Please sit down and let me pour you a cup of coffee and introduce you to one of my many cousins from the Italian side of the family. His name is Michele Aquino, and he recently wrote a book titled The Coffee Book Project, influenced by a recent trip through the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and his experiences there. Michele says:

The Coffee Book Project is all about reading, learning, and sharing! While I was living on a coffee farm in Central America, I started letting the local kids borrow children's books and I was inspired by how excited they were to have books to read. This little illustrated book aims to teach coffee drinkers a bit more about the on-the-farm steps involved in coffee processing while generating some funds to support literacy and creativity in rural coffee producing villages.

The book is small but quite beautiful, charmingly illustrated, and very interesting and informative. If you purchase one, a significant portion of the proceeds goes toward increasing literacy efforts in Nicaragua. The money will be donated as books for children in impoverished villages where books are a rarity. You can read more about the project at the website. Barista Magazine has a nice article, too.

Please consider purchasing The Coffee Book Project online.

And the first three people to comment here about how they like their coffee get a free copy from me, Cugina Elizabeth. I'll randomly select two more for a free copy as well -- just make sure you leave your email!

What I learned today

My fellowship with LEND -- Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities --  is proving to be fantastic. Each hour of lecture and exercise is more interesting than the next, and I'm surrounded by an incredible interdisciplinary group of psychologists, neurologists, psychologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, dentists, administrators, Title V folks and parents. I'm so excited about it and will do my best to share bits and pieces as I go. Please know that I'm not going to post charts and statistics, except for a few -- the source of this information is an incredible faculty of physicians and professionals devoted and dedicated to improving the state of healthcare for children in this country, particularly those who are disadvantaged, live in rural areas and have developmental disabilities.

What struck me today were POVERTY STATISTICS and their close correlation with developmental delay and  disability -- and then further down the line, enormous economic loss. In other words, how much we, as citizens, land up paying when basic healthcare needs are not met.

1)Children in poverty in the United States: 18%
                          
2) Those state/cities whose politics are the most progressive have the LEAST poverty (San Francisco is one example). The Bible Belt -- the most politically conservative states -- have the HIGHEST POVERTY RATES.

3) Since Johnson's Great Society, poverty rates have risen during conservative/Republican eras and fallen during progressive/Democratic administrations with NO exceptions, EXCEPT for the over-65 year old group. Why do you think?

MEDICARE
chew on that for a while

4) The moral imperative of PRIMARY CARE PREVENTION AND SOCIAL SAFETY NETS

5) Poverty is one of the strongest indicators for developmental disability.

There's my spiel. Stay tuned.