It's the beans

I had the pleasure today of a photoshoot surrounded by sacks of raw coffee beans, in a large warehouse fragrant of roasting coffee, with a free cappuccino for lagniappe. A local coffee-roaster is offering unhoused women the opportunity to train to become baristas. The organization that screens and supports barista trainees wants to make a brochure about their work but has no money to pay a photographer, so I volunteered. I’ve cropped this shot to protect the women’s identities. The more I work with unhoused people, the more stories of transcendence and resilience I hear. Many unhoused women are refugees from abusive men and now depend on their own earnings to support themselves and their children, so the opportunity to train for a job makes all the difference in the world to them. In this program, trainees learn to order beans, process them, bag them, and make espresso drinks.