ABOUT US
In HONDURAS, coffee "de palo" is a high-quality, home-grown and home-prepared coffee. Literally, it means 'of the stick' and refers to something lovingly and carefully prepared with a local resource.
As full-time development staff with Heart to Honduras, we have lived in and worked with Honduran communities for years via asset-based community development practices to facilitate local recognition and utilization of existing resources.
The first time that I drove a rock hard coffee wood stake into the ground, I quickly realized that there had to be additional uses for it, but for years, coffee wood at our home was relegated to garden duty, and our neighbors used it for firewood. The factor that finally pushed the original "big scoop" concept into existence was simple frustration with not being able to get beans out of the bottom of a bag of coffee.
When local carpenter Eduar Funez became the pastor in our small town of Las Lomitas in 2015, we quickly realized that we shared a mutual passion to catalyze local development in a sustainable and dignified way. He wanted to use his wood shop and carpentry skills to provide local employment. We had some sketches of a coffee scoop made of coffee wood. Within a few weeks, he was hunting down some coffee wood to see if it would be workable. After a couple of attempts, it had become obvious that the wood was suited to such work, and together we committed to give an honest try to the concept providing employment through the manufacturing of handmade coffee wood items for coffee consumers.
Through this venture, we hope to not only provide employment for a few local people, but to inspire people throughout the area and around the world to think outside the box and recognize the value of what they already have in front of them. Along the way, we hope that you enjoy the beautiful products that these artisans produce and that they serve well you and your coffee ritual, for years to come.
Grace and peace.
Kaleb and Stacey Eldridge
de Palo Products, LLC
HOW WE WORK
Our vision: Sustainable development opportunities in rural Honduras.
Our mission: To provide coffee lovers with high-quality products made of coffee wood while employing Honduran workers in a sustainable enterprise.
Two key values guide our company:
Local Capacity in the form of a dignified labor opportunity for the people of Las Lomitas and surrounding area of Honduras utilizing their existing talents and resources.
Sustainability via the sustainable usage of underutilized resources.
WHO WE ARE
Kaleb and Stacey Eldridge met at a small Ohio university in 2007 and quickly realized that we had a mutual passion to love and invest in those around them. That same passion led to marriage in 2009 and a move to Honduras in 2011. For the past five years, we have worked as community development professionals in the Lake Yojoa region of Honduras.
Throughout that time, we have lived in the small, rural, coffee-farming town of Las Lomitas, modeling small-scale sustainable agriculture and technology practices in addition to our wide-ranging community development responsibilities with Heart to Honduras.
Now we’re taking on de Palo as a side venture in our story, as we strive in our own personal lives to live sustainably. Income earned from de Palo represents a way for us to decrease the amount of annual donations needed for us to function in our current role with HTH. Our Christian faith has guided us on the road that we walk together, and in all that we do, we strive to be catalysts of love, peace, grace, and justice in our world.
Eduar Funez is the carpenter/pastor that runs the production end of de Palo. Since he was 8 years-old, Eduar has worked with wood and has earned a local reputation for his very high-quality work. Not only has it provided an income for his family and many others over the years, but he truly loves his craft. Now working as a bi-vocational pastor in the small, mountain town of Las Lomitas, he functions as our manufacturing contractor for de Palo and hopes to hire 3-5 additional local artisans once production begins in 2017.