A portion of sales goes toward varsity scholarships for student athletes
The University of Guelph has partnered with local coffee company Planet Bean to launch a new initiative to help fund scholarships for women’s varsity athletes.
A new Gryphon blend was launched at Planet Bean’s downtown location on Nov. 26, offering passersby a taste of the new brew and a chance to meet student athletes and their mascot, Gryph.
Scott McRoberts, director of athletics at the University, said that the partnership came about through a shared interest in supporting the work and achievements of women.
“It started off kind of organically—no pun intended. We sat down and we didn’t realize how many commonalities we have in both of our visions,” McRoberts explained in an interview with The Ontarion.
Not only does it help to support women in sport, the Gryphon blend is made from coffee beans grown and sold by Café Femenino, an all-female fair trade cooperative based in northern Peru that helps to employ and empower women within their community.
According to Planet Bean’s founder Bill Barrett, the project was started 10 years ago by a group of women who bonded together to help bring money into their home economy.
Having visited the cooperative back in 2006 and again in 2015, Barrett said the Café Femenino project is “remarkably transformative” in helping to support women in the community, providing better housing, technology, and education. In addition, Café Femenino’s mandate aims to give back to other women’s organizations.
“When the women of Café Femenino first designed their project, they were unaware that women in Canada were also victims of physical and sexual violence. So what they did is they mandated the roasters who buy their coffee to support women’s organizations,” said Barrett, explaining that Planet Bean supports Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis in addition to the new Gryphon blend initiative.
“It’s affecting lives in Peru, it’s helping women deal with the stresses of their households in a crisis, and now it’s going to nurture women’s athletics at the University of Guelph,” explained Barrett.
For McRoberts, this is just the first step in establishing additional funding and promotion for the women’s athletics program at Guelph.
“We’re going to do more to support female athletics and I want us to be at the forefront and ahead of the curve on how we support our female athletes,” McRoberts explained, noting that there has been an imbalance in the culture of giving between male and female alumni. “We’re establishing a committee of both female and male alumni to look at how to better support female scholarships going forward.”
During the launch event, varsity soccer players Jacquelina Preza and Danielle Corso told The Ontarion that fundraising initiatives like the Gryphon blend and the She’s Got Game banquet in the spring are important for spreading awareness about women’s athletics.
“Women’s varsity isn’t out there as much,” explained Preza. “So we have to fundraise and get the word out there for women.”
“There’s so much more opportunity for men for their career in the sport, but for women, we play varsity soccer, then it’s over,” said Corso, adding that just having the opportunity to get scholarships from the University is a step in the right direction.
McRoberts noted that even in professional sport at the Olympic level, “[Women] don’t get as much funding, they don’t get as much sponsorship, and as much promotion as the male athletes, so I think this is a way to say, they’re as important and we want to support them.”
The percentage of the proceeds will vary depending on how the coffee is being sold.Barrett explained that it will be sold as wholesale brewed coffee through Hospitality Services at the University, as well as bagged coffee at the University’s Bookstore, and the beans will be sold in bulk at Planet Bean locations.
According to Barrett, “It’s a nice mix of the nuttiness of the lighter component in it and then there’s a fruitiness from the dark component, but it’s a dark blend.”
Barrett added that the Gryphon blend is similar to Planet Bean’s most popular brew, Freedom Fighter.
Photo by Dana Bellamy.