The work of Greg and Leonie Waddell has enabled a school to be built in the village of San Luis El Volancito in Guatemala, which has allowed for all the village’s 17 children to receive formal education for the first time.

Greg and Leonie’s company Mayan Café has started importing green coffee beans directly from a farm in Guatemala, paying nearly 50 per cent above the regular international price to ensure money goes into community development including building the school and providing new homes.

The connection with the Central American country came when their daughter Ashley met a man in Guatemala and married him, later giving birth to a son.

Greg and Leonie travelled repeatedly to Guatemala over a decade, and in that time met associates of their son-in-law who ran a coffee plantation and were looking for someone to help export their bens away from the cooperatives and multinationals controlling the coffee trade who repeatedly forced down prices paid to farmers.

“This was something that was presented to us, and it was a great opportunity for both sides because the plantation’s owners needed a break like this,” said Greg, who has set up a warehouse at Kings Point.

“They wanted to deal with someone they knew and trusted.”

Greg left his trade as an electrical engineer and Leonie as a ballet teacher to go into the coffee business, although they admitted they knew little about coffee at the time.

Their knowledge is growing, aided by courses in Central America and feedback from specialist coffee roasters in Australia, who have raved about their coffee and gone to great lengths explaining the details of why it is so good.

“The first time we had some roasted we went back and all the staff were sitting there drinking our coffee and saying how fantastic it was,” Greg said.

But more important than the quality of the coffee is the way it is being used to change lives.

“We’ve been to this property, we’ve stayed there, we’ve seen the people and how they live day by day,” Leonie said.

“And we’ve been back to it to see how their lives are being improved, how their villages are being improved, with each shipment of coffee beans.

“We’re not out to make a killing from this, we just want to be able to make enough to survive off, and put the rest of the money into the community there.”

Greg said the process was far better than the so-called Fair Trade coffee, saying many coffee growers could not afford the fees to have their coffee certified as Fair Trade.

Yet major vendors could label their coffee as being Free Trade when as little as three per cent was obtained from certified sources.