Tadesse Meskela, a coffee farmer from Ethiopia, is making a 4,000 mile trip to Nottingham on the first weekend in July to raise awareness of the plight of impoverished coffee farmers and their mission to sell high quality coffee to Western coffee drinkers.
Tadesse will be at Broadway Media Centre on Saturday 7th July to speak and talk with the audience after the 6pm screening of 'Black Gold' the film in which he 'stars'.
The 7th July has been chosen for this event because it is International Co-operative Day, celebrated by Co-operative Societies with 800 million members in 91 countries. Every year the United Nations and the International Co-operative Alliance choose a campaigning theme - this year's theme is Corporate Social Responsibility.
'Black Gold' is a film about corporate social responsibility - and the lack of it in the international coffee markets. The film follows Tadesse as he travels to Seattle, revealing the challenges posed by commodity traders, coffee exchanges, and the World Trade Organisation.
Tadesse is also the General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, which he helped to establish in 1999 and which now has 103,000 smallholder farmer members in 115 co-operatives. It has successfully expanded into processing, storing and exporting - but finding markets for coffee, from the birthplace of coffee, has been hard. This is the story of 'Black Gold'.
Tadesse has been brought to Nottingham for this event by the Co-operative Party, which is celebrating its 90th Anniversary this year.
There will be African music played on the Broadway terrace during the afternoon, Ethiopian coffee on sale in the café, a Co-op Party information stall in the foyer.